


The Frost Spirit and the Honey Tree

by Kate_Anders, Kaylin and Kira (Saphie), Saphie



Series: The Guardian of Screwing Up [2]
Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-13
Updated: 2012-12-25
Packaged: 2017-11-21 01:55:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/592152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kate_Anders/pseuds/Kate_Anders, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saphie/pseuds/Kaylin%20and%20Kira, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saphie/pseuds/Saphie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bunny, Sandman, and Jack are called to Africa to investigate the strange disappearances of several children in multiple countries, where Jack meets - and loathes - Bunny's old friend Anansi the Trickster, the self-styled protector of the continent. When Jack's rash actions endanger himself and the group, he is forced to confront insecurities he didn't know were there. [Part Two of the Guardian of Screwing Up series.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic will be updated every few days. You don't really have to read "Snowbird" to know what's going on in this one but it helps explain some things.

“Adwoa, is your school uniform washed?”  
  
“Yes, mama, but why do I have to go to school? I hate school. My friend Tawia doesn’t go anymore.”  
  
“You’re going because the world needs changing and you have to have your head full of learning to change it. You’ll understand when you’re older. Now, if that’s done, to bed with you.”  
  
“But we’re not sleepy,” Adwoa protested.  
  
“Yeah, not sleepy,” added her young brother.  
   
“Sit down, children, and I’ll tell you a story.”  Grandmother Yaa, sitting by the fire with her sewing, beckoned the children over.  The firelight flickered on her dark skin.  “Then maybe sleep will come and carry you off to the morning.”  
  
Adwoa’s mother, Grandmother Yaa’s daughter, smiled, remembering stories past. She was sorely tempted to stay and listen to this one, but the wash needed finishing, and she had a childhood behind her that had filled her with many stories to keep her company. Hopefully, her little boy and girl would be so fortunate, and more fortunate still, when they were grown.  
  
The boy and girl settled around their grandmother’s feet, listening eagerly. For a moment, Grandmother Yaa closed her eyes, letting the words wash over her.    
  
“The thing you must understand is that Africa is motherland to the whole world.” Her needle flashed in the firelight as she worked, her words and her fingers never faltering. “Africa is where we all came from, from where man spread to every corner of the Earth, and Africa is the place where all stories begain. But long, long ago, there were no stories because the Sky-God, Nyame, had them all. The Spider didn’t think that was fair, so one day, Anansi decided to go the Sky-God to ask how much they would cost...”

* * *

  
The webs spread through his entire cave, glittering in the scant moonlight that filtered through a few small gaps in the stone.  
  
In the near-dark, the great Anansi was just a spider, because that was what he was. Admittedly, he was a very, very large spider, but seemingly no more than that. He skittered in the dark, he ate his flies, and he made his webs.  
  
But even so, there was no spider in the world that spun webs like Anansi’s. The webs were where the trickster kept his stories. They shone in the faint light, etched in silver, ever changing - old stories breaking in the breezes, their strands hanging until they were rebuilt into something new.  
  
Two lines of web twitched as if in a sudden breeze, the vibrations calling up Anansi’s attention.  The spider climbed over the webs and stones to take a look at the story that was caught, formless, in the web. The spider gathered silk of his own and began to etch the story into view.  
  
“Oh, this is nooot good,” he said to himself, when the story had taken form. “Not good at all.”  
  
He considered the threads that held the story, surveying the many, many others they were attached to. As they sometimes did, the stories gave him pause.  
  
Sometimes Anansi acted. Sometimes he did not. Sometimes he acted in certain, small ways, that appeared like not acting at all. Always, he made his choices carefully.     
  
He looked again at the story he had just etched, and at one of the stories from which it had sprung. There was a story in the form of a young man with a staff, surrounded by snowflakes, in a place snow absolutely did not belong.  
  
“Fool boy,” said Anansi, touching one hard-shelled black spider leg to the edge of the web.  “Come to play on my continent again, I see? Perhaps it’s time someone taught you a lesson...”

* * *

  
“So, where are we going again?” Jack called out as he and the Sandman slid through the mossy tunnels that led through the Earth, caught up in the Easter Bunny’s wake.  Sandy’s hands were thrown high in the air in delight as he and Jack were pulled along for the ride, and Jack too had come to enjoy travel by tunnel as an exciting mode of transport.  
  
“Didn’t North tell you back at the pole?” Bunny called from up ahead.  
  
“Sooort of. It was really quick and he wasn’t making a lot of sense.” Jack paused. “And I may have been looking at something else at the time.”  
  
Jack could just about hear the rolling of Bunny’s eyes. “At what, if I may ask?”  
  
“Oh man, have you seen the new zeppelin things North just built? They have these little planes that detach and fly off and the yetis were testing them, so - ”  
  
“So you ignored vital information to watch the pretty planes, is what I’m getting.”  
  
“Hey, they were cool. Weren’t they, Sandy?” Jack said, as they slid through a loop-de-loop. Sandy nodded, because, yeah, they were pretty cool, even though _he’d_ paid attention to the briefing.    
  
Sunlight blinded Jack as Bunny reached the end of the tunnel, which spat them out onto a wide meadow of lush grasses. Birds nattered in the surrounding acacia trees and the sun beat down, still blinding above them.  
  
Boy, that sun. It was shining a _lot,_ and along with the shining came a nearly _solid_ wall of humid air, slamming onto Jack like a wet plastic bag.  
  
The frost spirit shook his head. “Oh no. Nonono. Send me home. I didn’t sign up for this.”  
  
“Actually,” Bunny looked over his shoulder at Jack, grinning just slightly. “You _did_ sign up.  Maybe you should have paid better attention to what you were agreeing to back at the pole.”  
  
“I don’t do hot.” Jack tugged at the collar of his hoodie, fanning sticky, humid air down his neck. That only made him hotter so he stopped. “Where are we? It’s got to be a hundred degrees here.”      
  
“Senegal, and -” Bunny licked his finger and held it up in the air “- I’d say it’s only about thirty.”  
  
Jack snorted. “It is _not_ thirty degrees. I know thirty degrees. Thirty degrees and I are practically best friends.”  
  
“Celsius, mate. That’s about eighty-six Fahrenheit.”  
  
“Look, anything above fifty is not really my idea of a fun time. Whose bright idea was it to send a the winter guy to Africa?”  
  
Sandy looked over at Bunny, then back at Jack, then pointed a single finger at Jack, raising his eyebrows.  
  
“Again, _yours_ ,” said Bunny. “You not only agreed to come with, you volunteered. Now, what kind of nong would volunteer for a mission on a continent not fit for a winter guy, when a winter guy is what he is? Would it be the kind of nong who’s too busy watching the pretty zeppelins to pay attention when he’s being told what the mission is?”  
  
Both Sandy and Bunny were staring at him, and Bunny had his arms crossed in the posture that Jack had come to think of as his ‘Jack has got kangaroos loose in the top paddock again’ stance.  
  
“I can handle it,” Jack groaned, reluctantly. The heat made him uncomfortable, but it wouldn’t weaken him unless it got much hotter than this. “Let’s just get this over with.”  
  
Bunny turned and loped across the plain, Sandy bobbing along behind. Jack tried to call up a small wind to cool him down, but the slight humid breeze barely made him feel less suffocated.  He trundled over the grassy plain after the two other Guardians, trying to ignore the rising sensation of stickiness.  
  
“Can someone answer my question? What did I agree to here?”        
  
“Lights are going out on the globe, all over the continent.” Bunny stood up occasionally as he loped, smelling the wind (which, being from behind, unfortunately smelled mostly of them.) “Believers are disappearing in strange patterns.”  
  
That did sound more serious to Jack than toy zeppelins. “Kids suddenly aren’t believing anymore?” he asked. “Like with Pitch?”  
  
Sandy looked back at Jack and shook his head sadly. An image of a skull and crossbones appeared over his head.  
  
“There’s reports in the news of kids going missing. Ones that match the lights,” Bunny said. His tone matched Sandy’s expression.  
  
Jack’s eyes went wide. “You mean, they’re...?”  
  
The question trailed off into silence, and silence was his answer. Bunny even stopped walking to turn and face Jack.  
  
“It’s not always belief,” he said, gently. “Being a Guardian - it’s not all presents and dreams and eggs and quarters under pillows. You know what Pitch was willing to do to Jamie. He’s not the only one.”     
  
Now Jack felt ridiculously guilty for not paying attention. Any other complaints about the heat were immediately banished from his mind.    
  
“Do we have any idea what’s doing this?”  
  
“There are rumors that it’s not a human threat. Rumors of something like us - only newer.”  Bunny started walking again. “That happens sometimes. There are things that start as something else that get believed in - us Guardians, to name a few - the things that get changed by belief, and the things that are believed in first and come into the world as a consequence of that.”  
  
“Yeah yeah, I know. The second one’s what the Groundhog is.”  
  
“Exactly. One day Phil’s minding his own business, eating some grass, dumb as a your average groundhog, the next he wakes up speaking full sentences. We don’t know that’s what this is, though. We’re going on nothing, Tooth is swamped with the start of hockey season, and North’s looking into a problem in Tibet with the yetis. That leaves the three of us to figure it out, and deal with whatever it is.”  
  
Sandy looked to Bunny, creating an image of a spider over his head.  
  
“Right you are, Sandy - us, and possibly Anansi.” Bunny didn’t sound likely to rely on this possibility. “He’s a tricky one to pin down, though. For the most part, he handles this continent himself, but he doesn’t always step in. Or he doesn’t always step in right away. No telling yet which one’s the case now.”  
  
Jack frowned, skeptical.  “Why trust him if he won’t always help?”  
  
“He knows what he’s doing. Anansi’s a trickster. He doesn’t go about things in the most direct way, but you’d be surprised how much he does go about.”  
  
“I’m a trickster and I wouldn’t just let bad things happen to kids.”  
  
Bunny actually laughed at that. “Freezing up water fountains and covering my eggs with snow in the spring is not the same as being a Trickster.” Something in Bunny’s tone put a capital on the T. “Pointless pranks are your deal, not Anansi’s.”  
  
Jack frowned, jutting out his chin in indignation. His pranks were perfectly good pranks and hardly pointless, thank you very much. Bunny ignored the look and went on.  
  
“Anansi is old - old, and dangerous. The only thing you can count on with Anansi is that everything he does has a purpose. Maybe not an obvious one, but a purpose nonetheless. If he doesn’t step in, we do. If we do, it meant he knew we needed to step in. That’s how it works with him.”  
  
So, basically, the local guy was hands-off and that was why Jack was being lead, uncomfortable and irritated, through unfamiliar territory. “Sounds pretty indirect to me.”  
  
“Yeah, well, it’s best you show him and the locals respect. He’s powerful. And even older than Sandy.”  
  
Sandy nodded vigorously.  
  
“It’s bad enough you brought that blizzard to the Serengeti when you were on your little bender.  He’s going to dislike you from the get-go.”    
  
“It wasn’t like it was the _whole_ Serengeti,” Jack grumped. “And I get it, I get it. Don’t upset the locals.”    
  
Their hike brought them to the top of a hill at the edge of the meadow. A forest spread out below them, dark and thick-leaved.  
  
“So,” said Jack, not wanting to think about the still, hot air likely trapped in that dense jungle, “Where are we going now?”  
  
“All this time, you mostly kept to yourself, right?” Bunny asked. Jack nodded in response. “Then it’s about time you had a lesson in _diplomacy_.”    
  
“Hey, I’m completely capable of being diplomatic,” Jack insisted.  
  
Sandy and Bunny each gave him, and each other, an amused look. “Says the bloke who’s idea of g’day is a snowball to the face.”  
  
Jack opened his mouth to retort, then left it open for a moment before conceding, “Touche. Still, just because I’ve never _done_ it doesn’t mean I don’t know _how_ to do it. It’s just talking to people. I talk to people all the time.”  
  
Never mind that it was only recently that some of them started talking back.    
  
“Alright, well, a lesson wouldn’t be a lesson without giving you a chance to fall on your face, eh?”  Bunny was still grinning with the same amusement. “We’re heading to a village of the Yumboes in that forest there. They’re a sort of local fairy, eyes all over the place, and we need them for some information. How ‘bout you be the first to say hello?”  
  
“No problem,” Jack said, taking to the air, staff slung over his shoulder, a cocky grin on his face. “Lemme show you how this diplomacy thing is done.”    
  
He zipped down towards the forest. Sandy tugged on Bunny’s arm, giving him a skeptical ‘Are you sure this is a good idea?’ face.  
  
“We’ve got to teach him somehow,” Bunny responded. “And if he’s not going to listen before he runs, don’t you think we should let him stumble it out _now,_ rather than later?”  
  
Sandy considered this carefully, then nodded vigorously. He waved a trail of sand into the air, which turned into a small sand Jack zipping speedily past, question marks appearing in his wake and puffing completely out of existence.  
  
“Exactly. Didn’t even _think_ to ask us what he should know first. He needs to learn that those questions need to be asked.”  
  
Sandy nodded, crossing his arms as images appeared over his head. Jack near a window, ugly horselike shapes zipping past, and the sandy image of Jack zipping after them without a second thought. He pointed to himself, moved his hand to show he’d followed along, then crossed his arms over his chest and stuck out his tongue like he was dead.  
  
Bunny watched the images, his ears picking up with surprise.  “You never told us you were running after Jack when that happened.”  
  
Sandy shrugged, miming brushing the dust off his hands. It was hardly important now - he was back, Jack had learned, and the slate was wiped clean. He tapped his chest, conveying that following had been _his_ decision. His brush with death was his concern, not a burden for Jack to bear.  
  
Still. He lifted his hands in a ‘buuuut’ gesture, as the sand over his head depicted Jack falling to the ground dead.  
  
“I’m with you there, mate,” Bunny said. “If he doesn’t learn to be more cautious, it might be him next time - and he might not come back like you did.”  
  
Sandy nodded ardently.  
  
“All the more reason he’s got to learn.” Bunny grinned. “And there’s nothing wrong with us watching him do it.”  
  
Sandy apparated a popcorn box out of sand and tossed a glittering kernel into his mouth.  
  
Bunny smirked. “Yup, this is gonna be good _._ ”

* * *

  
“Hello?” Jack called out into the forest. The trees were close and thick, the canopy above him a messy tangle of branches that blotted out the sun. The shadows were so dark, they seemed almost solid. Even Jack didn’t dare go rushing in. “Uh, is anyone there? I’m Jack Frost, one of the Guardians?”  
  
The trees shivered as if in a sudden breeze, the rustling of the leaves like whispers spreading from one tree to another.  
  
“Uh, something’s up on your continent, with the kids? We’re here for information, to try to fix it.”  
  
No answer. No whispers.  
  
“Look, kids are in danger,” Jack said, gesturing futilely with his staff. “We - ”  
  
A cry from the trees - “HE HAS A WEAPON!”  
  
The earth erupted around him, and suddenly Jack was wrapped in a net of woven vines, his arms pinned to his sides, his staff falling uselessly to the ground as the vines whipped him into the air. Even his mouth was completely covered.  
  
Familiar, raucous laughter filtered through the vines and to his ears. Through a small gap he could see Bunny and Sandman coming closer to where he was hung, suspended, from the trees. It took Bunny considerable, and obvious effort, to get his laughter under control.  Even Sandman was smiling as if moments from bursting into laughter.  
  
Bunny’s voice still had a jovial tone as he called, “The Guardians come in peace to speak to the Yumbo people. Here is our offering of the violence that’ll be left behind at their doors.”  
  
He took out his boomerangs and laid them in the grass, then took off his leather satchel of exploding eggs and did the same. Sandy, in turn, held up his hands in a placating gesture of submission, showing that he was unarmed and intended to stay that way. They both bowed to the shadows.  
  
“Hail to the Guardians! Your offering pleases us. You are welcome to the city of the Yumboes!”  
  
“Now, about Jack over there, can you let him go? He’s new. Still learning the ropes.” Bunny peered over at Jack, crossing his arms and raising a bushy eyebrow. “Literally, at the moment.”  
  
Jack glared through the gap in the vines.  
  
“You arb desthpibable.”  

* * *

  
The webs shivered as Anansi wove more of the story into his great tapestry. There were small silver people in the trees now, and Anansi knew exactly what that meant.    
  
“Time to go,” he said brightly, climbing up his webs, out of his lair into the afternoon sun. When the light hit him, his shape changed to that of a man - though a man unlike any in the world, since there were no other men with huge spiderlegs sprouting from their backs. Anansi began casting lines of web from his hands into the wind, creating something akin to a parachute that billowed as it filled with wind.  
  
“Wind, old friend,” he called out, “take me where I need to go!”  
  
The wind whipped at the web parachute and flung Anansi into the air, carrying him off at breakneck speed. The wind also carried his laughter wherever he went, laughter nearly as old as the world itself.  


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter in which Jack deals with fangirls, ignorance gets a good schooling, and Anansi proves that Good Is Not Nice.

The Yumboes were a beautiful people with pearly-white skin and silver hair, who looked not unlike Jack - aside from the height difference. The tallest Yumbo reached about three feet and Jack, with his familiar looks and unfamiliar height, was causing a bit of a stir as he walked along the streets.  
  
He felt naked without his staff, but the Yumboes were a peaceful people.  The only problem was that not every other mythical being in Senegal was the same, hence the very tight security measures.  
  
“You could have told me about that, you know,” Jack pointed out as they were ushered in to meet the Yumbo chief. “About the right things to say.”  
  
“And you could have _asked_ , couldn’t you,” Bunny pointed out. “Ran right in without thinking it through.”    
  
Sandy gave Jack a sympathetic look but still tsk-tsked him regardless.  
  
“I just assumed -”  
  
“There’s your first mistake. Lesson number one: never go into a situation cold, frost spirit or no. You did that _twice_ today, by not paying attention to the briefing and zipping off without even considering that you might need to know something about the Yumboes before walking into their home.”  
  
“So I like to cut to the quick.” Jack shrugged, trying not to feel wounded that his best intentions had gone amiss.  “If kids are in trouble, what’s the point of standing around talking about it?”  
  
“The point is - hang on, we’re here.”  
  
The Yumboes led them into a large lodge. The exterior was simple, even run-down, but the building was somehow bigger on the inside, the walls and tables ornately carved.  
  
“Bunny!” called the chief, a squat little man in clothes that had either been stolen from, or made in resemblance of those of the Senegalese humans. “Finally, you stop by again! Get over here, old friend!”    
  
Bunny put up a good show of not looking put-upon as the Chief somehow wrangled his six-foot frame at an angle in a spirited head-lock-noogie combination. The rabbit’s composure was even amused as he was released to stand at his usual height again, as if he and the Chief really _were_ old friends. The idea of cantankerous Bunnymund having friends outside the Guardians struck Jack as surreal.  
  
“Chief Papadou, it has been a long time. How are you?”  
  
“Very well, very well. Such a shame we barely see you anymore. You really have left the trickster business to Anansi for good, haven’t you?”  
  
Bunny laughed, but it was awkward, embarrassed laughter.  “Ah, that’s for the best. Hope and spring keep me busy.”  
  
“Trickster?” Jack interjected. The surreality of the day was only getting stranger. “You were a Trickster? _You_?”    
  
“I was involved in some ... trickery,” said Bunny, cagily.  “A while ago  So, about our visit -”  
  
“But you’re so...so... _you_. You know,” Jack waved his hand, looking for the right words, “generally humor-less.”  
  
“Like I said, it was way back when,” Bunny cast a warning look at Jack, the warmth from his greeting to the Chief absent.  “Never heard an African hare story? They became the Br’er Rabbit stories in the southern United States.” He shrugged at Jack’s blank look. Colonial Burgess could have scarcely been called close to the South. “They all came from somewhere. But it wasn’t my Center. There’s no outclassing Anansi as a trickster, anyway.”  
  
“Unbelievable.” Jack turned to Sandy. “Him?”  
  
Sandy nodded. Yep, him.  
  
“Anyway,” Bunny said, succeeding this time at changing the subject, “Chief Papadou, we’re looking for some information. You might be able to help us out.”    
  
“Yes, of course, anything for an old friend, but first, hospitality! Have a seat, have a seat! We’ll bring you some food and spoiled palm-wine!”  
  
‘Spoiled palm-wine?’ Jack mouthed to Sandy, who gave him a thumbs up. Good stuff, the spoiled palm-wine.  
  
While the meal was being set and the guests seated, Bunny brought the Chief up to speed.  “There’s been a rash of disappearances all over the continent, about one child a week, in different cities and different countries.”  
  
Chief Papadou frowned in due concern. “You think these disappearances are related?”  
  
“Thing is, there’ve been brush fires lit at the sight of every disappearance. The humans are saying it’s kidnapping and arson, but some of the jengu in Cameroon saw something leaving the fire and slipping into the woods. They passed the word on to one of Tooth’s fairies  - whatever it was, it wasn’t human, and it didn’t look all that natural either.”  
  
“The jengu knew nothing else?” asked the chief, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.  
  
“No. The human news reported a child missing and a fire not far from here.  We hoped one of your people’d seen something.”  
  
“I’ve heard nothing, but let me ask of the others. They’ll spread word in the city and see if anyone has seen or heard anything.”  
  
The Chief left them to question his people, leaving the three Guardians alone to enjoy their meal.  
  
“So. I really missed a lot back at North’s, huh?” Jack picked guiltily at his food. There was a lot of corn involved in the meal. In fact, it pretty much seemed to be entirely corn. Even the little fried patties were made of corn.  
  
“Well, you just got the rest of it now,” said Bunny as he grabbed one of the fried corn patties and took a seat across from Jack.  
  
“How many kids so far?”  
  
“Six, counting this recent one.”  
  
There was Jack, still guiltily picking at his food.  
  
“So while those six kids were - ” Jack cut off, unable to bring himself to finish the sentence. “I was goofing around making snow days and icing up water fountains. We’re supposed to protect them, right? How could we - how could we not know this was happening until now?”  
  
“Lights go out all the time as kids stop believing.” Bunny, guiltless, was stuffing his face. “Don’t even start down that road - you start beating yourself up for not going after something you didn’t know existed, you’ll only do yourself a load of damage before you wise up and stop.”  
  
Sandy nodded.  
  
“I just feel like I shouldn’t have been wasting my time. If things like this are going on, shouldn’t we be out here looking for them before they hurt any kids?”  
  
Sandy put a hand on Jack’s arm and multiple images flashed over his head, too quickly for Jack to follow.  
  
“Sandy, Sandy, you’re going too fast there, buddy.”  
  
“What he’s trying to say,” said Bunny, “is that there’s more than one way we have to protect them. It’s a big world out there. If we spent all day looking for trouble like this, trying to protect them just this way, we couldn’t do it the other ways. That’s why we’ve all got to figure out ways to balance out our time to do the most good. We keep them physically safe when we need to and the rest of the time, we protect all the other parts of their childhood that are important.”  
  
Jack sat there, mulling it over. A part of him was still dissatisfied, just on principle that six kids were de - missing, and even if he hadn’t known anything that could have prevented them from being taken, he sure hadn’t been doing anything that would have helped the Guardians figure it out when the number was still lower. To distract himself, he said, “So, Bunny - you and Anansi, in the trickster business together - how’d that happen?”  
  
“Hey, is that palm-wine?” Bunny reached across the table, grabbing a full mug and placing it in front of Jack. “You gotta try this, mate. The Yumboes love it. So does Sandy. Tell him, Sandy.”  
  
Sandy, half-deep into his own mug of palm wine, nodded vigorously. Bunny lifted his own cup for a sip. Jack, shrugging, took a gulp.  
  
The taste hit him like a slap in the face - a sour slap in the face. It was more sour than if he’d stuffed his mouth with every sour candy imaginable, after it’d been drenched in lemon juice and left over several days to spoil in some milk. It was like being hit in the head with a rock wrapped in a lemon peel. Jack held it in his mouth, fighting the urge to hurl.  
  
“Don’t spit it out,” Bunny warned him. “That’s the rudest thing you can do in Yumbo culture, refuse their hospitality.”  
  
Jack shook his head furiously. He couldn’t swallow it. How could _anyone_ swallow it? Ever?  
  
“They’ll probably kick us right out of the village. Might not even give us the information. We’ll be back to square one on the children, mate. Think of the children.”  
  
Oh, he was crying. This tasted so bad there were tears forming in his eyes and he was crying. This _literally_ tasted like pure misery.  
  
"The longer you hold it in your mouth, the longer you have to taste it.”  
  
Jack swallowed. It burned all the way down, like a fire snake. He gagged abruptly, struck by a coughing fit that lasted a good five minutes.  
  
“Is he all right?” asked one of the Yumbo girls, moving closer to Jack. “Does he need more palm-wine?”  
  
“No,” Jack rasped out. “I’m good. I’m good on the palm-wine.”  
  
Bunny grinned smugly as the girl walked away. “By the way, I was lying about the hospitality.”  
  
“You,” was all Jack could say, pointing a finger at him. There were no other words, there was no greater insult in that moment than ‘You.’  
  
“Hold that thought,” said Bunny, rising, his smug smile gone. “Looks like the Chief’s had his talk.”  
  
He loped off to speak to the Chief, leaving Jack alone with Sandy, who still had his now quarter-empty mug. Jack glared at him. “You too, Sandy?”  
  
Sandy frowned in apparent confusion and sipped from his mug again. Jack snatched it from the dream guardian’s hands and sniffed - no, that was definitely the smell of spoiled palm wine.  Jack sat in shocked silence as Sandy snatched his mug back and sipped from it again, frowning indignantly. Sandy wasn’t in on the prank - he just legitimately liked the stuff.  
  
“Never figured you for a lush,” Jack managed, weakly. Sandy shrugged and finished his mug, an image of Jack appearing over his head, wearing what appeared to be judge’s robes, a gold-sanded X crossing the image out. Put the gavel away, Jack, he seemed to be saying.  
  
It was then that Jack noticed that the same Yumbo girl who had asked if he wanted more wine was staring at him. In fact, there was a group of teenage girls, all clustered together, little smirks on their faces. They were occasionally giggling.  
  
“Uh...hi?”  
  
They all tittered.  
  
“Can I help you?” he asked.  
  
“You’re so taaaall,” one of them cooed.  
  
“And beautiful,” said another.    
  
“And perfect,” said yet another.    
  
“My room’s really hot. Do you think you could come cool it down?”  
  
Jack’s eyes went wide. Sandy laughed silently at the look on his face.  
  
“Uuuh...”

* * *

  
“ - and I’m afraid that’s all the information we can give you, but it should be a start,” the Chief finished.    
  
Bunny nodded. “Thanks Chief, that’s more than we had, and that’s something.”  
  
“‘Scuse me, pardon me, that’s very flattering, ma’am, but you can take your hand off my butt now, thank you - and you can, too, sir,” Jack said, working his way past the fanclub he’d somehow acquired. His body language was guarded as he made his way over to Bunny. “Flattered. Not interested, very not interested, but flattered. I'm just...gonna go over here. And hide. Behind this rabbit."  
  
Which was exactly what he did, putting Bunny between himself and his sudden harem.  
  
“What are you doing?” asked Bunny.  
  
“I don’t know what it is,” said Jack, shifting to keep himself behind Bunny as his rabbit shield attempted to get a look at him. “It’s like I’m some kind of adonis here and it’s terrifying.”  
  
“Ah, it’s because you have something of the look of our people but are very tall,” the Chief said, nodding with a knowing twinkle in his eye. “Very attractive by Yumbo standards.”    
  
“That’s great, let’s go.”  
  
“What, right now?” asked Bunny, mischievously. “Thought we might stay and finish dinner, at least.”  
  
“Look, if you have the information, I’ve already lost my dignity. I’d like to hold onto my chastity, if at all possible - hey, whoa.” He turned to see a girl standing uncomfortably close beside him. She was running her foot up his leg. Jack darted, putting Bunny between himself and the girl. “Please?”  
  
Bunny’s expression lost its joviality as he realized Jack was genuinely uncomfortable.  He turned back to Chief Papadou. “Chief, thanks for your hospitality and the information, we appreciate it,” he said with a slight bow. “C’mon, Sandy.”  
  
Sandy pointed to a jug of spoiled palm-wine and the Chief nodded jovially, so he snatched it up to bring with him, grinning widely.

* * *

  
They left the Yumboes in peace, their weapons returned to them at the gate. To Jack, it wasn’t so much leaving as ‘escaping,’ though he immediately regretted leaving the relative cool of the shady trees to face the sweltering heat of the open plains. The sun was low in the sky, sinking towards evening, so that at least gave him some relief. “So what did you find out?”   
  
“One of the Yumboes saw tracks in the dirt not far from the last disappearance. Something big, but they didn’t know what caused them. Hasn’t rained since, so it still might be there.”  Bunny tapped the ground with his foot, opening a hole fit for the three of them. “Let’s go have ourselves a little look then, shall we?”    
  
Jack and Sandy jumped in after him, enjoying the ride through the tunnels.  
  
“I guess that Anansi guy isn’t going to show up for this one, huh?” Jack said, his voice echoing through the tunnel.  
  
“Dunno,” Bunny called back. “Sometimes he shows last minute. If he’s planning to, I’m sure we’ll get some kind of -”    
  
The tunnel shot them out suddenly into a forest, right into something huge and sticky. Jack’s staff was knocked out of his hand. It landed just out of reach, stuck to the same substance they were. It was like some kind of net or maybe a...  
  
A web. They were stuck in a giant spider’s web.  
  
“- sign,” Bunny finished, thrashing in the web. He looked around. “All right, Anansi, very funny.”  
  
Jack couldn’t even move his head enough to get a look at their surroundings. His face was stuck looking partway at Bunny. He couldn’t even see Sandy, who was on his other side, but he could hear the shifting sounds of his sand. It sounded like he was doing something to try to work himself loose, but it wasn’t promising that it was taking him so long.     
  
“Anansi, come on,” Bunny called out again. “Get us down from here, mate.”  
  
“Is this his idea of a joke?” Jack asked crankily.  
  
“Everything is his idea of a joke.”  Bunny called out again, starting to get cranky himself.  “Anansi, this has gone on long enough. We’re on a schedule here!”  
  
Something moved in the shadows at the far end of the web. Jack tensed, stretching his fingers fruitlessly towards his staff.  “Hey, Flopsy, are you sure this is Anansi’s way of saying hello?”  
  
“One, don’t call me that. Two, of course it is,” insisted Bunny. “The only spiders this big in Africa are the J'ba FoFi and they’re in the Congo.”     
  
“They couldn’t possibly have spread anywhere else?” Jack asked, his panic building as the spindly shape in the shadows moved closer.  
  
“The Congo’s in the middle of the continent and we’re in the Northwest. How is it you get a bird’s eye view of everything and know less geography than someone who travels underground?”  
  
“I told you, I don’t come here oft - oh no.”  
  
The spindly shape emerged from the shadows. It was a spider, a very big spider. It was, in fact, the biggest spider Jack had ever seen.  
  
“What does Anansi look like?”  
  
“Human, with legs sticking out of his back. Why?”  
  
“Can he turn into just a spider?” Jack asked nervously. “Like a huge, hairy, giant spider with fangs that drip with venom. You know, like the one coming towards us?”  
  
Bunny’s eyes widened and his voice cracked as he answered, “No. No, he can’t.”  
  
“Sandy! Sandy, do you have a hand free? Make it go to sleep!”  
  
Jack thrashed violently, which, it seemed, was a bad idea, because it attracted the beast’s attention. The spider climbed right over Bunny, who let out a terrified moan of pure despair, and crawled over to Jack. Its enormous glittering black form blocked out the last of the evening light. It hissed a deeply unsettling noise as its fangs darted in and out, flashing with feverish motion.  
  
Jack cringed, his whole body stiff with terror, an involuntary “aaaaah!” escaping his mouth as he squeezed his eyes shut.  
  
The bite he was expecting never came.  
  
Instead came a round of hysterical laughter. Jack opened his eyes to see a man looming over him instead of a spider. He didn’t look all that much older in appearance than Jack, maybe in his early twenties, but his grin made him look even younger; his pearly white teeth flashed in a way that probably would’ve made Tooth swoon. His dreadlocked hair made a halo around his face like spider legs, and he wore sunglasses with green lenses that had the sheen of a spider’s eyes. His skin was the deepest shade of black Jack had ever seen - and Jack had seen some exceptionally deep shades of black, when he’d  gotten some inadvertent and very unfortunate glances up the dress of the bogeyman mid-fight. (Thank goodness Pitch was wearing shadowy pants underneath, that was all Jack had to say.) His clothes were an eclectic mix of modern clothes and traditional African garb, though Jack had no idea what the tunic-like thing he wore was called.  
  
Anansi’s most obvious feature, though, were the eight massive spiders’ legs that sprouted from his back. They held him aloft as he balanced on the web, the same dark color as his skin, but covered with a hard, shiny carapace.  
  
He  wasn’t the only one amused. Bunny was laughing himself stupid, barely able to catch his breath. If glaring had been a competitive sport, Jack’s glare at the moment could have won him the gold.  
  
“Anansi can’t turn into a giant spider, huh?”  
  
“The look on your face!” Bunny howled as Anansi backed off Jack to pluck the rabbit from the web. For a moment, the two leaned on each other like the old friends they apparently were, laughing themselves silly.    
  
“Had to get one in for old times’ sake, old friend. Well done on the acting,” said Anansi, patting Bunny on the shoulder. “You might have fooled even me.”    
  
Anansi stepped over Jack, who felt a weight release from the web on his other side. Sandy, zipped over to Bunny and thwapped him soundly on the back of the head, sand billowing from his ears in his irritation.    
  
“Sorry, Sandy, sorry. Had to make it convincing,” Bunny protested. “It was a golden opportunity, mate. I couldn’t resist.”  
  
Anansi crouched over Jack, fixing him with his full attention again. “So this is the new Guardian, the ignorant child who brought a blizzard to my land where a blizzard does not belong.”    
  
“About that, it wasn’t really -”  
  
“No excuses.”  
  
“I wasn’t about to -”  
  
“Yes you were.”  
  
Jack frowned and thrashed again. “Are you going to let me down?”  
  
“Not until I’ve had a good look at you first.” Anansi crouched there, looking over Jack’s face carefully. Jack had no idea what he was looking for, but eventually Anansi nodded as if he’d found something - or found nothing. “I don’t see it.”  
  
“Don’t see what?” asked Jack, trying to lift the half of his face that was stuck to the webs.  
  
“Why the Man in the Moon chose you. You have a fool’s face, a fool’s mind, and at best, a fool’s luck.”  
  
“Hey!” Jack thrashed against the webs again.  
  
“And a fool’s temper. A winning combination.”  
  
“C’mon, mate,” Bunny said, giving his old friend an admonishing look. “That fool’s luck _did_ save our tails back against Pitch. Mine most of all.”  
  
Bunny’s concession almost made Jack overlook that it was a backhanded compliment. Almost.  
  
“Hey!”  
  
“Really? Well, I suppose all ills are now undone.” Anansi paused, looking over at Bunny and Sandman. “By the way, I’ve been wondering - what happened to Easter this year? Oh, and Sandman, how were you were missing from the world for a time? I can’t think of how anyone could get the drop on you like that.”  
  
Jack’s eyes went wide. “How do you - ?”  
  
He didn’t get a chance to finish because Anansi casually released the webs holding him, and Jack sprawled to the ground. His staff fell a moment later, striking him painfully on the elbow. Jack grabbed his staff, looking over at Sandy and Bunny. They didn’t seem to have told Anansi anything to lead to the questions he’d asked. Bunny’s arms were crossed in irritation and Sandy was shaking his head.  
  
“Leave it,” said Bunny, raising an eyebrow. To Jack he said, “Anansi’s got a knack for finding things out. He’s also got a knack for not explaining how he does it.”  
  
“The shadows talk, my friend, the shadows talk.”  
  
Jack narrowed his eyes slightly. Anyone talking about shadows being useful got his hackles up, and his hackles were pretty far up already. It also made him distinctly uncomfortable to know that a stranger somehow knew about his mistakes, and even more uncomfortable that he was focusing more on those than his successes. He’d fixed it all, hadn’t he? He’d stopped Jamie from losing his belief just in time. Didn’t that make everything okay in the end? There was a steep learning curve to this Guardian thing, and he’d gone three hundred years without any guidance.  Expecting him not to make any mistakes when he hadn’t even known why he’d been chosen in the first place was ridiculous.         
  
“Now that we’re all acquainted, we’ve got to get down to business,” said Bunny. “Anansi, do you know what’s been going on?”  
  
“It was recently brought to my attention, yes. I spoke with the jengu and during my search the winds blew me here. I know nothing else other than that there is something preying on the children and leaving fires. Such a thing will not be tolerated on my continent.”    
  
“ _Your_ continent?” Jack interjected. “Last I checked, not even the Guardians claim any one continent as theirs, and _we_ protect all the kids in the whole world. You know, rather than sitting around and only hopping in when we feel like it.”  
  
Sandy waved his hands frantically at Jack, as if to say “cool it,” and Bunny made a “cut it out” gesture, but Jack ignored them.    
  
Anansi looked at Jack coolly over the rim of his sunglasses. “Last _I_ checked,” he said, “the Guardians didn’t consider me one of their number. This continent is my domain, as it has ever been, and the Guardians are only welcome here by my leave.”  
  
“By _your_ leave. What exactly gives you the right to control a whole continent?”  
  
“Tell me, Jack Frost, what do you know of Africa?”    
  
Jack furrowed his eyebrows. The truth was, he didn’t know all that much about Africa. Most of it was too hot for his usual rounds, aside from the mountaintops, but he wasn’t eager to admit that.  
  
“It’s hot, there’s a lot of jungles and deserts, and, um -” He searched his memory. “I don’t know, a lot of people here are poor?”  
  
Behind Anansi, Bunny and Sandy rolled their eyes skyward. So did Anansi. “Nyame save me from ignorant Americans.”  
  
He shot a web from his hand, snagging Jack’s staff and yanking it away.  
  
“Hey, what --”  
  
Anansi’s second web snagged the front of Jack’s hoodie, and Anansi yanked Jack over with it.  He grabbed Jack by the back of his shirt and shot a netlike web into the air. The two were suddenly whipped straight out of the trees and into the sky by a wind that had enough speed behind it to give Jack whiplash.  
  
“Aaah!” Jack yelled as they shot up into the air. He was usually fine with flying and fast movements, but being grabbed and yanked hundreds of feet up into the air without the staff that kept him from falling wasn’t exactly fun. He stiffened his body so that he didn’t just slip out of his hoodie, which was choking him uncomfortably. “Okay, you can put me down now.”  
  
“Oh, can I?” said Anansi, the tone of his voice pure innocence. “Good to know. Very well then.”  
  
He released the web holding Jack aloft. Jack plummeted - for two, heart-pounding feet, before Anansi tightened his grip on the web again.  
  
“ _Without_ dropping me!” Jack shouted, as Anansi laughed overhead. “You can put me down now, _without_ dropping me! That part’s important!”  
  
“No, I can’t. Not until you open your eyes and _look_.”  
  
The sun was setting on Senegal. There was a river valley not far off, bordered by mountains, verdant forests, dry grasslands.  
  
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”  
  
“If I say it is, do we get to go back to the surface? Gently?”  
  
“This is just one country, out of many countries, with a few cultures out of many cultures. Throughout this continent, there are countless peoples and nations and tribes and languages.  There is poverty and there is prosperity. There is despair and there is hope. The rest of the world reduces an entire continent to a few dry images, images that neglect to mention that this is the rich soil that all the peoples and all the stories in the world sprang from. This was the place where our kind were born, Jack Frost, because this is the place where people first started to _believe_.”    
  
Anansi blew out a breath that became a calm breeze, sweeping around them. The breeze made the world warp suddenly, and Jack saw much farther than Senegal. Far off, in the light of the setting sun, he saw skies full of birds with lightning crackling from the ends of their wings. He saw lakes with massive, glowing, golden fish. He saw children playing in the streets in modern cities, and dancing around communal fires in the country. There was a moment that he looked on it all with the kind of wonder that was always in North’s eyes.      
  
“How could you hope to understand something as huge, magnificent, and storied as this land when you rarely set foot here? What gives you any right to question someone who _does_? I care for this continent in my way because the ignorance of people like you has damaged it so deeply.”  
  
Anansi jerked Jack up on the web and caught the collar of his hoodie, holding Jack up to his face with surprising strength.  
  
“Before you drown in that ignorance,” Anansi said pointedly, in a way that made Jack wonder exactly how much the shadows had told him, “learn to swim.”  
  
He released the web parachute and they plummeted to the ground. Anansi landed on his feet, his spider’s legs absorbing the shock of their fall. He dropped Jack to the ground like a discarded toy.  
  
Sandy and Bunny watched Jack land with spectators’ curiosity.  
  
“For Anansi, that was pretty straightforward,” Bunny commented quietly, as Jack picked himself up. Beside him, Sandy produced the image of a small, golden Jack flying head-on into a cliff and shrugged. Sometimes, with Jack, straightforward was important.  
  
Bunny turned to Anansi now. As much as Jack had quite a few lessons to learn, scaring the pants off him wasn’t really the way to go about it. There was a difference between childish insults and bullying, just like there was a difference between prankery and cruelty.    
  
“Anansi,” Bunny said quietly, in a quiet warning tone that possibly spoke of a long history of holding Anansi back on occasion.    
  
“Bunny,” was all Anansi said back, but then he was briefly quiet in response. Eventually, he shrugged his shoulders, as if shrugging the last few minutes away, and said, “If we’re done posturing, there are children in need of saving.” He walked on his spiders’ legs through the brush, waving for Sandy and Bunny to follow. Jack retrieved his web-covered staff, wondering how it was possible for him to feel this stupid and this irritated at the same time.  
  
One thing he knew for sure: he and Anansi were _not_ going to get along.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I love watching someone set out their own place setting in preparation for eating their words,” Anansi said quietly, hand curled under his chin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which Jack loses his shirt (literally, not metaphorically) and Bunny loses something else that is spelled almost like "shirt."

“Here we go. This looks like the spot,” said Bunny, pushing aside a frond of palm to open up a view to the village. Jack saw a gathering of people several hundred strong, all congregating in a courtyard meant for far fewer than that. They were gathered around a particular home, and loud, caterwauling weeping carried from the open windows, all the way to the forest.  
  
“The window was broken,” Anansi said quietly, “and the child’s blood was in the room. The Senegalese try to bury their dead within six hours of death. The family is disheartened that they have nothing to bury.”  
  
Jack stood and watched, eyes wide, hand against the bark of one of the trees. He could see a woman kneeling in the courtyard, at the center of the mass of people. A cloth was spread in front of her, money and gifts laid upon it. The way she held her head, sobbing disconsolately, face half hidden by her hands and her head wrap, made it clear that the gifts were no comfort.  
  
What could be a comfort to a bereaved parent? Nothing that Jack could think of.    
  
Against his bidding, the scene transformed itself in his mind to a similar one that he knew must have happened - another woman surrounded by a village giving their condolences, trying to comfort a hurt that couldn’t be comforted, all because the ice had been just a little too thin.  
  
Anansi was watching him but the moment Jack turned to see, he turned away to face Bunny, who was kneeling and looking at the ground. The rabbit didn’t seem to like what he saw.  
  
“Anansi, when’s the last time you saw a grootslang?” he asked.  
  
“Several decades ago, and it was killed. It should have been the last.”      
  
“A grootslang?” Jack asked. “What’s a grootslang?”  
  
“A giant snake,” said Bunny. “They usually stick to South Africa, but that’s the only thing that’d fit.”  
  
“Why’s that the only thing that would fit?”  
  
“Look at the tracks.” Bunny pointed to what appeared to Jack to be a complete absence of tracks in the dry dirt. On closer inspection, Jack noticed a vague groove snaking through the dust.  
  
“They’re small,” said Jack, looking at the groove. “Why would that make you think it’s a giant snake?”  
  
“That’s the impression of one scale, mate. Look at the tracks we’re _all_ standing in.”  
  
Jack looked from side to side of the path they were standing on. He took to the air for a better look, and realized that the path was actually a massive, singular groove seven feet across and plunging through the broken foliage.  
  
“Cock and pie,” he blurted out.  
  
Sandy raised an eyebrow at him.  
  
“What do chickens have to do with anything?” asked Bunny.  
  
“I, uh - have no idea what that means,” Jack admitted after a moment. “I’ve been saying things like that since I got my memories back - I think they might be sayings from when I was younger, coming back to me now that I know who I was.”  
  
Not important. Besides, it was embarrassing to blurt out words like “prithee” and “arsy varsy” when you were least expecting to. Time for a subject change.  
  
“Okay, so, we’ve got tracks to follow. What are we waiting for?”  
  
“Hang on a tic,” Bunny called, before Jack could zoom off.  “You can’t just go shooting off without your wits about you, Jack.  Grootslangs are dangerous, and not just to children.”  
  
To his surprise, Jack spotted a slight tremble in Bunny’s hand as he spoke. There was no fear in his expression, his voice, body language, or otherwise, but the shaking hinted at something suppressed beneath the rabbit’s veneer of ranger calm.  
  
A mocking laugh built up in Jack’s voice. “Don’t tell me you’re scared. Come on, Captain Carrot, after Pitch and his nightmares this’ll be gummy worms in the Easter basket.”  
  
Bunny’s serious expression intensified into a glare. “First off, _you_ try being a prey animal and ridding yourself entirely of that instinct. Second, in case nobody ever told you, not everything needs to destroy children’s belief before it can destroy us.”  
  
“It’s a snake,” Jack repeated. “Sure it’s been taking its vitamins and eating its Wheaties but how much of a fight can a snake really put up against three Guardians and this professional wag?”  
  
“I love watching someone set out their own place setting in preparation for eating their words,” Anansi said quietly, hand curled under his chin.  
  
“I’m not spitting the dummy at nothing here, Jack,” Bunnymund insisted. His frustration was clearly starting to build, as in years past when Jack iced over the new-grown crocuses or dropped a branch load of unmelted snow on eggs that were already well-hidden. Again, Jack fought the urge to chuckle. A frustrated Bunnymund was almost too nostalgic to be taken seriously. “You rush in and so far you’ve been tinny enough for it to pan out, but you can’t always count on that. And this is Dinky-di. This is real stuff going bump under the bed when even Pitch is down and out. It doesn’t need you to be scared of it to hurt you, or the kids on this continent, for that matter. Keep. Your. Head.”  
  
The rabbit put special emphasis on each word. With a final glare, Bunny took off down the trail. The pace he set was speedy, but still slower than the one Jack had intended to set when he was close to rushing off.  Jack breezed along behind, and as as funny as it had always been - and still kind of was - to annoy Bunny, he couldn’t help but feel a little unpleasant as he wondered why it seemed like he just couldn’t do anything right today.  
  
Or, actually, why it felt like he’d been doing everything wrong ever since he’d been sworn as a Guardian. His little belief-drunken icing spree had only been the start of his mishaps.  
  
The tracks lead them through dense underbrush for the better part of an hour, the trail becoming more obvious as it plowed through thick plants that had bent and broken a new path around it. As a consequence, they made good time - probably better than the snake  itself had made. Still, there was nothing when they came to the end of the path - just a hole in the ground leading into deep darkness.  
  
The snake’s path was too obvious for any of them to need serious tracking skills to follow it, but Bunny was still at the lead. He was sniffing around the entrance to the hole when Sandy and Jack arrived, Anansi sauntering along in the rear. Jack hovered nearby, feeling stuffier than ever in the dense underbrush.  
  
“Great, we found its burrow.” Jack kept his voice soft, considering their element of surprise. “Here’s a plan: I ice the snake’s hidey-hole down, the snake dies, we call it a day and take a nice vacation. Maybe to Antarctica.”  
  
“Check your facts, mate.” Bunny was halfway down the hole, his voice echoing in the emptiness. “This isn’t a burrow.”  
  
“Or Svalbard, I hear Svalbard is nice this time of year.”  
  
Bunny grabbed Jack’s bare ankle and yanked him down to ground level.  
  
“Will you use your senses for one minute? Feel the air coming out of the hole.” Initially Jack couldn’t feel anything, but as he held still before the entrance, he saw the downy fur on Bunny’s ears shifting and became aware of just the slightest draft on his face. “It’s a tunnel. Maybe a whole system of tunnels.”  
  
Bunny half-disappeared into the tunnel again, ears twitching madly back and forth. He was down there for a while, so long that Jack started to speak, but a small hand on his shoulder brought his attention back to Sandy, who shook his head, lifting his finger to his lips in a “shhh” gesture.  
  
Bunny sat back upright abruptly. “It’s on the move. Let’s go.”  
  
Jack groaned at the thought of the humid African air trapped in underground tubes. “Woah, hang on there Mr. Prey-Animal-Instinct, you really want to go charging into a snake’s tunnel like that?”  
  
“No,” Bunny fixed Jack with another glare, his paws curled into fists, possibly to stop the tremble Jack had seen earlier. “You really want to see another scene like that one back in the village?”  
  
Jack sobered, thinking of the mourning family. “No.”  
  
“Me either. Come on.”  
  
Bunny disappeared into the tunnel, closely followed by Sandy. Jack sighed and jumped in after them, not waiting to see if Anansi would follow.  
  
The tunnels were lined with some sort of lichen that glowed faintly in the dark and carried them along like leaves on a river. The tunnels were obviously magical, just like Bunny’s, covering far more ground than they should have been able to.  
  
“There are offshoots everywhere!” Bunny called from up ahead. “This must cover the whole continent. Anansi, mate, did you know about this?”  
  
“No, there are some things that escape even my eyes,” Anansi said, a touch of concern in his voice. “This is new, my friend. Very recent.”  
  
The three tumbled along in Bunny’s wake. His ears twitched madly as he listened to vibrations in the tunnel. “Left!” He called out directions in the places where the tunnels diverged, all of them flying along behind him, or in Anansi’s case, kicking off a wall with his long spider’s legs. “Right!”  
  
Eventually, they reached the end of the tunnel and flew out into a cave. The sky, through the cave’s mouth, was dark and dotted with stars.    
  
Anansi sniffed the air. “South Africa. It covers quite a distance indeed.”  
  
“This is how it’s been traveling and causing attacks in so many countries. It’s been attacking villages and towns near openings in the cave system,” Bunny said quietly, ears twitching. “It left this way but I don’t think it’s nearby. Must be out in the woods.”  
  
That meant it was already hunting, and a child was in danger. Bunny raced through the opening of the cave, the rest of them keeping pace behind him. Lights from a nearby town were starting to shine through the trees.  
   
“We need to split up,” Jack said quietly. Before any of them could argue with him, he went on, “Even if it’s in pairs. We’re not going to cover enough ground in one group.”     
  
“He’s right,” said Bunny. “We should have a flier and someone on the ground in each group. Signal if you spot it. Sandy, you’re with me. Anansi...don’t break him. We’ll take the north and east, you take the south and west.”  
  
Jack’s shoulders slumped. “Why are you making me go with Spider-Man? Can’t I go with Sandy?” He zipped down closer. “Is this some kind of hazing thing?”  
  
“What part of ‘a flier and someone on the ground’ did you miss?”  
  
“Anansi can fly,” Jack protested.  
  
“Diplomacy mate,” said Bunny, merciless, a hint of a smirk in his expression. “Practice makes perfect.”  
  
Bunny and Sandy raced off. Anansi lifted his hands to his mouth to call after them, “I make no promises.”  
  
“Promises about what?” Jack asked.  
  
“Noooothing,” Anansi answered in sing-song. Jack groaned softly and took to the air, landing in a high tree overlooking the town. It was late, but there were still lights on in some houses. A few families were still at their evening meal, but many had already put their children to bed, and many homes were dark and quiet. Jack dropped to the ground beside Anansi.  
  
“How well can you see in the dark?” he asked.  
  
“Very well,” said Anansi. “My sense of smell is also very acute. I can smell your blood, for instance. It has the tang of damp wood.”  
  
Jack looked in the direction Bunny had gone, hoping that he could somehow magically send a glare over great distance. He wanted Bunny to _feel_ that glare hitting him upside the head in the dark. Of Anansi he asked, "Did someone tell you once that you weren't creepy enough, and you decided to spend the rest of your life proving them wrong?"  
  
“This way.” Anansi ignored jack, waving him towards the village and into an alley. “It’s likely hiding at the edge of the wood, where it is less likely to be seen, but it might have found an alley to curl up in.  We will have to check the edge of the woods and the alleyways ourselves. That will also help prevent us from being seen ourselves. You’ll need to work to remember that now.”  
  
Jack tightened his grip on his staff, irritated at being reminded of having been invisible for so long. He took to the air again, picking up speed as he flew along the border between the woods and the village. He didn’t quite break ahead of Anansi, but he kept just enough in the lead that there was no chance of the spider looking up and seeing the expression on his face.  
  
A small flare of light in the woods caught Jack’s attention. It could have been a torch from someone walking around in the brush at night, but that seemed unlikely. He let the wind waft him into the taller trees, where he could get a closer look at the light. Embers were smoldering in a deep track cut through the foliage, which would have doubtless been alight if the leaves weren’t still wet from a recent rain.  
  
“Anansi,” Jack hissed. Then, louder “An -”  
  
“No need to shout,” came Anansi’s voice, much too close behind Jack. The spider man hung in the trees behind him, eight giant legs suspending his human body from many branches. The precise and fluid movements of his spider legs as he climbed down sent an involuntary chill down Jack’s spine.  
  
“I changed my mind,” Jack hissed. “Nobody could have _ever_ accused you of not being creepy enough.”  
  
Anansi looked at Jack again over the rim of his sunglasses. “You’re still perched up there like a bird, when our quarry is on the move?”  
  
Jack groaned, calling the wind to take him up. “One minute I’m moving too fast, the next minute I’m not fast enough. You and Bunny need to make up your minds.”  
  
“I did not say go charging in -” Anansi started to say, but Jack had already called the North Wind to blow him along the grootslang’s trail, leaving Anansi still navigating the thick brush with only a chill air for company.  
  
"Reasoning with him is like trying to dig a deep well with a blunt spear," Anansi muttered to himself.  
  
The smoldering trail led back to the village, where the lights had begun to go out. The last light was extinguished inside the house at the farthest edge of the village, and as it was, a snake of impossible size surged forward, out of the shadows where it had been waiting.  
  
“C’mooon, wind!” Jack urged, the distance between him and the child-eater not closing fast enough. The snake already had its head at the kid’s window. Just before it slipped in, Jack managed to slide through the gap first, pivoting and firing a burst of ice magic directly into the snake’s face.  
  
Anansi was yelling something, but it was little hard to hear over the crackling of frost and the crash of the snake smashing the wall it had been partway through to pieces. The kid, very much awake now, was screaming behind Jack, and so was the house around them both. An ominous crack ripped over Jack’s head - he threw up an ice shield just in time to protect himself and the kid as the roof caved in.  
  
The child, stunned into terrified silence by the ice shield, touched the ice and looked at Jack with eyes that obviously saw, but maybe didn’t know exactly what they were seeing. Jack gave the kid an awkward grin and held out his hand.  
  
“Hey.  You probably shouldn’t stay here.” The ice shield would only hold up for so long in the warm weather, and the wreckage it was supporting would only crash through a second time. “Come on, let’s go find your mom and dad.”  
  
The kid, too scared even to say how scared he was, took Jack’s hand. Jack carefully melted a hole in the ice shield, leading the kid through and into the hallway, where the screams of the child’s family alerted him to their imminent arrival. The snake was nowhere to be seen, but Jack saw past the ice shield and the gap where the wall had been that the bush nearby was shaking with conflict and small bursts of flame. As the sound of the parents’ footsteps became louder, Jack shot out the nearest window and flew on the breeze into the woods where Anansi was fighting the grootslang.  
  
In the dim light from the brushfires, Jack saw glittering spiderwebs threaded all through the trees. Anansi flipped with effortless grace from branch to branch to ground to branch again as he dodged the giant snake’s strikes. Now that Jack had a better chance to see the grootslang up close, he saw how truly sinister it was. Its beady eyes glittered in the firelight, its wicked-looking scythe like fangs dripping with venom that burst into flickering fire where it fell on the ground. Fire spewed from its mouth as it struck again and again at Anansi. It looked almost demonic, less a creature of belief and more a creature that had slithered out of dark cracks of the molten world in the dawn of time.  
  
"Hang back, find an opening, and snipe!" Anansi shouted as he dodged another fire strike, shooting web from his wrists in an attempt to net the massive creature.  
  
“And let you have all the fun?” said Jack with a bravado that was only partly sincere. “Not a chance!”  
  
He’d made a mess of things so far. Now it was time to make up for it.  
  
He dove in, flying towards the creature, staff raised - and nearly got whiplash when one of the sticky strands of webbing snagged his arm and yanked him back into another web. Jack tugged, trying to get free and his struggling attracted the snake’s attention. It jerked its body, and the momentum whipped Anansi from his branch and sent him flying on his own line of web into the trees. Unimpeded now, the snake eyed the dangling morsel caught in Anansi’s web, its dark eyes glittering with hunger.  
  
“Okay, that was a bad plan,” Jack admitted. “Then again - “ He tried to freeze the webbing, but found that it wouldn’t freeze. “ - just charging in technically isn’t a plan at all.”  
  
He fired bolts of frost at the snake with his free hand, but it darted too quickly out of his limited range. Each dodge brought it a little bit closer, and panic rose in Jack’s gut like the water level during a flash flood. It was almost enough to make him feel bad about having teased Bunny about prey instinct - _almost_.  
  
With only a moment to act, Jack did the only thing he could think of to save himself - he let go of his staff and slipped completely out of his web-tangled hoodie. He fell free just as the snake snapped at the space where he’d been, its massive jaws severing the strong spider webs with a single blow. Good fortune finally favored Jack as he caught his staff right before hitting the forest floor.  
  
“Hey!” he shouted, looking up at the broken web. “Did you just eat my shirt?”  
  
Shreds of blue fabric dangled, burning, from the grootslang’s jaws. It opened its mouth with a hiss, the flaming lump of fabric falling to smolder on the forest floor. Jack blasted ice at the snake angrily. “I’ve had that thing since eighty-nine!”  
  
Now he was going to have to steal a new one.  
  
The grootslang exhaled an enormous breath of fire which met Jack’s onslaught of ice and exploded the attack in a cloud of vapor and fog. The shockwave threw Jack against the trunk of what felt like a particularly hard tree. Dazed, he looked up just in time to see the grootslang inhaling for another deep breath of fire.  
  
The familiar thwip of Bunny’s boomerangs gave Jack just enough of a heads-up before the snake reeled just short of breathing fire, hissing in pain. Blood poured from its left eye where the boomerang had struck, and a lash of dreamsand struck the grootslang on its blind side. The Sandman swooped in on a glittering cloud, lashing the injured snake back as Jack got to his feet.  
  
“Nice shot,” He said as Bunny darted through the foliage behind him to retrieve the boomerang.  
  
“What happened to your shirt?” Bunny asked. The snake hissed in the background as Sandy lashed it into a collection of Anansi’s webs woven closely enough to resist its massive strength.  
  
“It ate it!” Jack exclaimed, indignant. “I’ve had that shirt since eighty-nine!”  
  
“Nineteen-eighty-nine or sixteen-eighty-nine, like those pants of yours?”    
  
Jack laughed. “I’m not taking jabs about my pants from someone who doesn’t wear clothes at all.” He took off with his staff, blasting the snake directly in the face so that they could all get in closer without the threat of the fire breath. Bunny followed with a volley of exploding eggs to the grootslang’s head, disorienting its sense of hearing as well as its sight. Sandy continued whipping the creature back into Anansi’s nets, foiling its attempts to escape as Jack and Bunny lined up new, stronger shots.  
  
They worked like a seamless machine, just as they’d done during their last fight with Pitch. Jack was elated. Finally, he was doing something _right -_ finally, he was falling back into step with the other Guardians. So what if he’d made a few missteps, now that everything was panning out in the end?  
  
Bunny, lining up a shot with his boomerang, asked, “How’d it get your shirt while you were wearing it?”  
  
“He had to slip out of it when he got caught on my webs.” Anansi swung in from the trees, firing his webs to net the Grootslang in from the front. “I told him to hang back but he didn’t listen, just as he didn’t listen earlier when he rushed in to fight the grootslang in the child’s home.”  
  
“What?!”  
  
Even Sandy stopped his attack long enough to shoot Jack a surprised look. Jack winced as the sense of team unity practically dissolved around him. He couldn’t even muster a glare at Anansi for bringing his mistake up.  
  
“That was _your_ damage back there _?_ ”  Bunny sounded precisely as angry as he _hadn’t_ been with Jack since he’d become a Guardian. “What were you thinking? Were you even thinking at all?”  
  
The grootslang opened its cavernous mouth and spouted fire in one long stream, cutting Bunny’s furious rant short. The trees around them, steaming and smoldering from the battle already, caught fire in a sudden blaze that spread, despite the dampness of the forest. The intense heat smacked into Jack like a train.  
  
The snake threw itself against its bonds so madly that the trees holding the web net broke before the webs did. The Guardians and Anansi scrambled to dodge the burning timber, too busy avoiding being crushed to stop the snake as it slipped into the underbrush. Jack started after it, then paused, looking back to the fire growing in the brush.  
  
The other three were working to control it. They were surely enough to contain it. Jack turned to go after the snake.  
  
“Oh no,” Bunny’s angry shout cut through the roar of the growing fire. “You aren’t going anywhere, you gallah - get over here and help put this out, right now.”  
  
Jack bristled at the command. “In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s getting away!”  
  
“In case you hadn’t noticed,” Bunny exploded, “You’re the only ice spirit here, and the wind is blowing _towards the town!_  For once on this _entire_ trip, would you make yourself useful instead of flying off to make everything worse, _again_?”  
  
Bunny’s words stung, but not like one piddling little bee sting. No no, this was the equivalent of rattling a nest of Africanized honeybees.  
  
He’d done nothing right, nothing at all, since he’d gotten here. This was a serious mission, serious Guardian work, with the lives of children at stake - and all he’d done was make it worse.    
  
And he wasn’t even this thoughtless and rash - not normally. Or was he? He _had_ put some kids in compromising situations before - a lot of freak sledding accidents - but he’d never hurt any of them. He’d always gotten the kids out fine, just like he’d get them out of it now. He was a Guardian. He’d proven it once - now he had to prove it again.  
  
He half-obeyed Bunny, dropping to the ground and slamming his staff into the soil. A huge, smothering gust of cold air blew most of the fire out, and the snow and frost that crystallized in its wake put out even more.  
  
“There, that should be enough!” Jack called and then he zipped off. “I’ll go slow it down!”  
  
“Jack, wait!” When Jack did not wait, Bunny snarled a wordless growl and returned to the task of stomping out the remaining flames. Sandy paused for a moment, watching Jack zip off with a frown that was less angry and more bewildered.  
  
“Hey, Sandman!” Bunny snapped, mid-stomp. “I could use a hand turning off the bush telly, if you’re not too busy!”  
  
Sandy heaved one more thoughtful (and silent) sigh before flooding sand over the fires beyond Bunny’s immediate reach.  
  
“- of all the irresponsible, stupid - If brains were dynamite, he couldn’t blow his own nose. That drongo’s got a ticket to himself.”  Bunny resumed his ranting as he stomped out the remaining fires.  
  
“Ah yes,” said Anansi, casting web over the fires. Rather than burning, they smothered them out even if they twisted and shriveled from the heat. “Youthful arrogance is surely at the heart of this. There are no other reasons a boy would want to prove himself.”  
  
Bunny looked up from his last inspection for remaining fires. “You want to imply a thought so the rest of us can understand it, mate?”  
  
“No,” Anansi said, almost in sing-song.  
  
Bunny heaved a long-suffering sigh and loped to the edge of the trail. “We find the tunnels again, maybe we can catch up. C’mon.”  
  
Sandy continued hovering as Bunny charged ahead. He glanced to Anansi as he conjured the image of Jack flying into a cliff, over and over again, and gave the spider a quizzical look. Anansi just bared his sparkling white teeth in a huge smile that, frankly, sent shivers down even Sandy’s spine.  
  
Better to leave the trickster to his own thoughts. The Sandman floated off after Bunny in search of the grootslang and their youngest, most impulsive, teammate.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Jack gets his butt kicked and gets him some learnings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The action chapter! After this, there's just one more chapter dealing with the gruesome aftermath.

The good thing about chasing the grootslang through the tunnels was that there was no room for it to turn around to strike Jack. The bad thing was that Jack had no idea when the tunnels might open up and _let_ it turn around to strike him.

The snake veered to the left suddenly and Jack flew after it into an open space. Sure enough, he heard scales scraping against stone just in time to dodge as the snake struck from where it had looped around behind, fangs flashing in the dim light of phosphorescent fungi.  
  
Jack threw ice blasts and dodged, the snake doing the same, pushing him farther and farther into the cavern’s wide expanse. The snake lunged suddenly, but instead of striking Jack, slithered underneath him, into a small hole at the back of the cavern, where stalactites and stalagmites had grown together like a cage between that cavern and another.

“Hey!” Jack shouted, racing after the snake again.  The cavern he emerged into had no exit – only the single hole, through which the snake had already come, and it thrashed and hissed as it searched for an exit through the cagelike stalagmites, or in the solid walls.

Jack stood over the sole entry tunnel, triumphant.  “Gotcha!”  
  
The grootslang whipped its tail towards Jack. He threw himself forward with an ice blast that went wide, harmlessly coating the stalagmites with frost. The snake’s tail slammed into the wall behind him, pulverizing the stone into heavy boulders that fell, piling up in a heap over the exit tunnel.

“Actually,” hissed the snake. “It lookss like I’ve got _you_.”  
  
Jack sucked in a breath as understanding dawned on him.  
  
“Trap, huh?”  
  
“Obvioussly.”  
  
“Good trap,” Jack admitted.  
  
“Thankss,” said the grootslang, baring its dripping, arm-long fangs. “I try.”  
  
“Well, listen, technically we’re trapped in here with each other,” Jack pointed out. “This could go either way. There’s just one thing I need to know before decide whether you get to live or whether you get -”  
  
“- iced?” finished the snake.  
  
“’Killed.’ I was going to say ‘killed.’ I don’t do ice puns.” Jack gave the snake a dirty look at the implication alone. “Look, I’m giving you one chance, right now. Will you swear never to hurt another kid?”  
  
“Take the Enkidu Oath, and live in harmless secret?” The snake sneered. “Of coursse not. Human children are deliciouss.  And let’s face it.” The snake fixed Jack with the full burning force of its one remaining good eye. “Ice never beat fire.”  
  
“Okay,” Jack said nodding, slotting this Enkidu Oath thing as something to ask the others about later. “How about we put that to the test?”  
  
He swung his staff at the snake, shooting a huge blast of ice magic with an angry cry. It wasn’t so much that the snake intended to keep murdering children (although that was plenty bad) – it was that the snake was just so _blithe_ about it. Three hundred years of an invisible life among kids, being privy to their hopes and their fears and their joy, had created in him not just a desire to protect them, but a complete lack of understanding as to why anything would want to hurt them. The idea was repulsive, unimaginably cruel, and the grootslang’s careless disrespect for the six lives it had snuffed out filled Jack with rage.  
  
He’d made many thoughtless mistakes today, but now he could do one thing right – he could make sure this monster never hurt another child again. As a Guardian, he could do no less.

* * *

 

Following the snake through the tunnels was more difficult than Bunnymund wanted to admit. The system of tunnels and chambers had a way of confusing and misdirecting sounds, even to his acute hearing, and every false end just added pressure to his growing frustration. The Sandman, quiet as ever as he swept along behind him in the tunnels, barely had a chance to catch Bunny’s attention. He only managed when they halted (again) in another closed tunnel, where he finally was able to point out to Bunny that somewhere along the trip, Anansi had disappeared.

Bunny groaned out loud, recalling his own speech to Jack about Anansi’s ways. He knew better than most that if Anansi had taken off, it was probably for a good reason, but there was always the possibility with tricksters, even with Anansi, that it wasn’t. Tricksters were great fun when it came time to shake things up that needed shaking, but they weren’t necessarily comforting in the midst of a crisis.

So they were down an ally – no sense counting on Anansi, because there was always the possibility that he wouldn’t show up again at all – with a grootslang on the loose and the most irresponsible Guardian ever sworn in chasing it down - possibly into who knew what village - in a tunnel he couldn’t quite locate.  
  
“Bloody show pony.” Bunny had not stopped muttering to himself since they dove back underground. “That glory-hound is going to get some kid killed at this rate.”

He gathered his strength for another burst of speed, but Sandy floated in front of him, little sandstorm fireworks bursting to get his attention. The little sand image of Jack over Sandy’s head had his chest puffed out and a flippant expression, but Sandy had imposed an X over the image.  
  
Bunny rolled his eyes, his patience worn far past thin. “You think I’m wrong too? Well don’t keep it to yourself, mate, spell it out.”  
  
Sandy flashed more images into being. This time, the sand Jack stood separate from the Guardians, who were angrily posturing and berating him. The dejected sand-Jack seemed to shrink in on himself as the Guardians finalized their rejection, leaving the little image all alone. Though Sandy hadn’t been there, the image reminded Bunny remarkably of how they had rejected Jack once before, the first time he’d made a serious mistake, when he left them open to attack from Pitch on Easter. It reminded him of how Jack had been afraid they would d it again, when he’d caused all that damage on his little belief bender not so long after.

Bunny sighed, but it was with resolve rather than sympathy. “This is a problem bigger than his _feelings._ He doesn’t listen, and he doesn’t learn, he tries to make up for his mistakes with bigger, better victories, and someday he’s _not_ going to win. Some kid’s going to pay the price for that. Which do you think would hurt him worse, if someone was hard on him now for being so rash, or if some kid died because of something he did, trying to un-bruise his ego?”

Sandy nodded, frowning, but still gripped Bunny’s shoulder. The image of the puffed-up, egocentric Jack appearing crossed out again. Now the golden sanded Jack was floating unseen through generation upon generations of humans, sitting alone as a sandy spectral globe spun around him in a passage of, even to immortals like them, a long time.  
  
Bunny’s expression was half-irritated, but also half-pained. “What?” he snapped. “Like I don’t know what it’s like to be alone? At least I never - hang on.”  
  
They each heard it at once - a distant cracking of many rocks falling that echoed through the tunnels. Bunny took off without another word, sweeping Sandy along behind.  
  
They emerged into an open cavern, where cagelike stalactites and stalagmites separated them from the battle that was raging between Jack and the grootslang. Bunny was about to try to force open a tunnel of his own into the battle cavern when one of the many oblong rocks around him and Sandy suddenly cracked with a hiss of escaping pressure. A jet of steam poured from the crack, which glowed with a molten, fiery light.  
  
“Those aren’t rocks,” Bunny breathed, he and Sandy staring in dread for a moment before assuming fighting stances.  
  
“Maybe grootslangs are born with more than just instinct,” Bunny suggested, just the slightest touch of nervousness in his voice. The rest of the rocklike eggs cracked, the cavern filling with steam and hellish light. “Might get a chance to reason with them.”  
  
Sandy looked at him with a skeptical, dry expression that asked, ‘Do you actually believe that?’  
  
“Not in the least,” Bunny admitted, as the first of the infant snake monsters burst from its shell and, true to its nature, launched itself towards the nearest tantalizing smell of meat.

* * *

  
  
Jack was wearing it down.

At least, in the _beginning_ , he was wearing it down. The ice blasts clearly hurt the grootslang, and left it covered with scaly frost-burns.  
  
Too bad Jack was working against two strengths – the snake’s fire, and its physical strength. Every time he came close to freezing it down, the snake broke free either with sheer physical force, or by melting the ice with its fiery breath.  
  
And the more the snake used that fiery breath, the bigger Jack’s other problem became – the heat in the cavern was rising. The fireblasts left stones red-hot, the heat building into an inferno in the closed chamber. It was getting more and more difficult to stave off the heat, especially when he had to use so much of his power to fuel a direct attack.

It was becoming too much. The snake had already noticed.  
  
“Can’t take the heat, I ssee. I did warn you.”  
  
“Says the reptile currently sporting some pretty nasty frostbite.”  
  
“Ssomething you’ll pay for, little ssnowflake. You--”  
  
It didn’t get to finish its sentence. Jack blasted his magic into the grootslang’s open mouth, freezing its spit and venom. While the grootslang gagged on its own frozen spit, Jack flew up in the air, forming a long spike of sharp ice. He landed with it on the grootslang’s back and plunged the spike in as deep as he could.  
  
The grootslang screeched in misery, flames spewing from its mouth. Black blood bubbled out of the snake’s body, hot as tar, burning where it flowed over Jack’s hand.

Jack let out a yelp of pain and jumped away from the tar-hot blood, and accidentally threw himself into the line of its thrashing head. The grootslang slammed into him, knocking him back down onto the stones. He bounced several times, his staff landing out of his reach as he came to a stop.

“Sscuttling inssect!”   
  
Jack rolled and grabbed the staff, forming an ice shield around himself just in time as the snake poured on the fire. The rough wood grated against his burnt fingers, but he didn’t dare risk holding it with just the one hand. His staff vibrated with the force of the cold and heat, forcing him to brace it against the stony floor of the cavern. The outer layers of the shield were melting fast, filling the room with steam, and it was becoming clear with every moment that the snake had been right to be arrogant – it could put out more fire than he could put out ice.

Plus, it still had its tail. It came smashing down, shattering the last of the ice shield. Jack barely dodged the direct blow himself.

 A sudden yell echoed through the cavern.

“Hey, Joe Blake!” called Bunny. He and Sandman were barely visible, unable to squeeze through the stalactites and stalagmites to come to Jack’s aid, but also a little preoccupied with their own battle with a whole throng of baby snakes – baby being a relative term, because even in infancy, the grootslangs were huge. “You’ve got one chance. If you’re willing to take the Enkidu Oath, we’ll let you and your brood live."   
  
“Never!” yelled the snake.  
  
“Then you might want to get your carpet grubs under control before we do.”  
  
The grootslang didn’t even bat its good eye, its gaze still focused on Jack. (And there was the Enkidu Oath again. What _was_ that?) “If they’re weak enough to be killed by a rodent and _sand_ , they deserve to die young.”  
  
Jack winced.  “Wow. Motherly love’s not big with you giant fire breathing snake monsters, is it?”  
  
“Lagomorph!” Bunny shouted. “Rabbits aren’t rodents.”  
  
The snake shook its head, its body language as close as it could come to a scoff.  “I’m not going to argue taxonomy with a - ahhh!”  
  
The scoff was just enough of an opening. Jack fired his ice at the snake’s remaining good eye, the strike landing sure and hard.

“Thanks for the distraction!” he called to Bunny.

“Do you think I need to ssee you to kill you?” the snake hissed, flicking its forked tongue. It struck, lightning quick. Jack jumped out of the way, kicking off the stony wall of the cavern to give himself some momentum. It wasn’t enough. The snake’s sharp teeth - thankfully, not the venomous fangs - dug into his bare ankle and whipped Jack from side to side. The snake worried him like a child waving a rag doll, and flung him against the far side of the cavern. He slammed into the wall and slumped slowly, far from his staff and desperately overheated.  
  
Across the cagelike stalagmites, Bunny and Sandy looked up a moment from their own battle in time to see Jack crumple against the far wall, the grootslang pulling back for an imminent strike.    
  
The shot had to be perfect - perfectly aimed, and timed.  It had to be the sort of shot that only someone who’d spent hundreds of years throwing things could make.  
  
With a fraction of a second to aim, Bunny threw one boomerang in an arc that whirred through a slot in the stalagmites, curved an arc a hair from scraping the side of the cavern, and connected – slamming into the grootslang’s snout as its strike brought it into the boomerang’s path.  
  
Bunny had barely released his throw when one of the baby grootslangs delivered a strike of its own, perfectly aimed at the giant rabbit’s exposed shoulder.  When Bunny turned the snake was still there, an inch from striking, straining against the sand whip holding it in place. It gave Bunny just enough time to throw his other boomerang, striking yet another baby snake as it made for the Sandman, who yanked the sand whip, snapping his captured grootslang against the bars of their earth cage. The two shared the briefest companionable smile before throwing themselves back into the shared battle.  
  
Jack scrambled to his feet while the grootslang hissed and reeled in pain. The strike from the boomerang had shattered one of its venomous fangs besides bludgeoning its snout, and molten hot blood seared its mouth and wounds. Blind, damaged, frost burnt, the proud creature went into another wild thrash of fire and bodily bludgeoning. Jack, weakened and wilting in the steaming heat, could do little more than dodge and land heavily on the stone floor.  
  
“You don’t want to eat him,” a voice suddenly called from off to the side. There, standing where had been empty space only seconds before, was Anansi. “There is no meat to him, only slush and ice where his bones should be.”  
  
“Aah,” the grootslang flicked its tongue, tasting the air, “if it issn’t the Great Ananssi again. What do you care what happenss to thiss little ssnowflake? Hiss death is hiss own fault. He chosse to throw himsself into the fire.”  
  
“He is a fool and I could care less about him. No, I am here because I heard tales of your giant mouth. I was told that you could swallow a grown man the size of myself in one gulp but after seeing you myself, I do not believe it.”  
  
“I’ll sshow you when I sswallow the child. Perhapss that will ssatissfy your curiossity.”  
  
“Oh, he’s hardly grown. You _would_ take the easy way out, wouldn’t you - because you can’t do it. The reputation I have heard of the mighty grootslang is just a myth. How disappointing; I will be sure to correct the stories.”  
  
“Fine! You want a demonsstration? Here’ss one up closse and perssonal!”  
  
The grootslang struck, closing its entire mouth around Anansi and swallowing him in one gulp. A large bulge moved slowly down the snake’s body.    
  
Jack shuddered and gasped, but the gasp was almost a sob. He knew Anansi – didn’t _like_ Anansi – but knew him and he’d just been eaten alive. Trickster or not, there was no way that _getting eaten alive_ could have been his plan.  
  
And it was his fault. Anansi was dead and soon he would be, too. Bunny and Sandy would be lucky to get out alive after fighting the baby snakes. They couldn’t possibly be lucky enough to escape the adult grootslang as well.  
  
 _I didn’t mean for this to happen._  
  
His answering thought followed immediately:

  _Just like you didn’t mean to run off and get Sandy hurt by Pitch? Just like you didn’t mean to run off and get tricked by Pitch into letting him destroy all the eggs at Easter? You never mean for this to happen - so why does it keep happening?_

He had no time left to figure it out.

The snake darted in. Jack crawled backwards, dragging a trail of blood from his bleeding foot until he was pinned against the wall, quivering like a Christmas pudding being poked by children that were too easily entertained. The grootslang’s tongue flicked in and out, greedily taking in the scent of Jack’s fear. 

“Killing the great Ananssi and a Guardian in one day? I wish I had the capacity to wear hatss just sso I could put a feather in my cap. Now sshould I jusst eat you, or burn you to a crissp, or sssqueeze you until your insides wind up outsside firsst?”   
  
“Please, just - just -”  
  
“Pleasse jusst make it as misserable as posssible? Certainly.”  
  
The grootslang’s tongue flicked against Jack’s chin. He cringed, shutting his eyes, hoping against hope that he would just pass out rather than be conscious during his gruesome end in the creature’s gullet.  
  
“Bottom’ss u--uck. Ggckt.”  
  
The grootslang gagged.    
  
“Kkkcft.”    
  
It gagged again.  
  
Jack opened one eye. The snake had reared back and the bulge that had been Anansi was about one-third of the way down the snake’s body. It was getting...bulgier.  Eight points pressed against the creature’s throat from the inside, stretching the snake’s flesh to the breaking point.  
  
The grootslang let out one last gasp that was probably meant to be a scream and then its flesh practically exploded, black blood gushing out in rivers, its body completely bisected. A figure tumbled out into the hot sludge, eight spider’s legs spread to brace his fall.  
  
“Oh, that’s hot. That’s very, very hot,” said Anansi, dancing in place. The smoking black blood covered his body, but he seemed more uncomfortable than injured. Under the blood and guts, Jack could see flashes of a chitinous exoskeleton covering Anansi’s human shape, in addition to spider’s legs. The spider covered himself with webbing, then tore it off and the black blood came away, soaked into the web. Even Anansi’s clothes were clean, though very seared.  
  
“You,” he said, pointing to Jack as the exoskeleton over his human shape softened back into skin, “You’re lucky I don’t go sound you! You owe me big time, you little tok. That was _not_ pleasant.”     
  
Jack struggled to his feet and limped a few steps to Anansi. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m s--I’m--”  
  
“You’re about to faint is what you are.”  
  
Sure, enough, Jack fell forward, eyes rolling up in the back of his head. Anansi caught him just in time. The last thing Jack heard before the world went black was Anansi sighing.  
  


* * *

“Fool boy.”

The spider gathered the boy into his arms and scuttled over to pick up Jack’s staff, as well as Bunny’s boomerang.  He carried all three to the cagelike rocks separating the chambers, braced his spider’s legs against two of them, and shoved until the stone cracked and fell. He slipped through as the last hatchling hit the dust, dead. 

“Such a shame these creatures are a slave to their natures,” he said, looking over the corpses of the dead newborn grootslangs. “It pains me when only some children can be saved from themselves.”  
  
Bunny and Sandy hurried over, eyes wide with alarm.

 “Is he -?”

“He lives,” said Anansi, tossing Jack’s staff to Sandy, and Bunny’s boomerang back to its owner. “I will not say he is fine because I don’t think it’s true, but he lives. He’s overheated though. We must get him outside and cooled down.”   
  
“He’s _lucky_!” Bunny exploded, entreating Anansi for agreement. “He was within cooee of dying. Not to mention getting the rest of us killed!”  
  
Sandy shook his head, pointing to Jack.  
  
“I’m not spewin’ for nothing here! He’s so blind to -”  
  
Sandy shook his head again, grabbing Bunny’s arm. He pointed to the tunnels, and the general direction of “out of here.” Then he pointed to Jack again.  
  
“Right,” Bunny grumbled, stowing boomerangs away and hopping towards the tunnels. He couldn’t give Jack the talking-to to end all talking-to’s if the heat killed him down in the tunnels.

Sandy swept all of them up on a cloud of sand, to spare Jack the turbulence of following Bunny through the tunnels. They soared through the earth, Bunny calling out directions to the surface. 

Sandy cast an inquiring look at Anansi. A snake appeared over his head in sand, followed by a plus sign, another snake, eggs, and a question mark.   
  
“I saw the bones of its mate in another chamber,” said Anansi. “That particular family has at least been eradicated. If there are others that have been freed, I will dispose of them, now that I know of the tunnels. The services of the Guardians are no longer required.”  
  
“Left here, Sandy. I smell fresh air,” said Bunny. They turned into a cave that opened out onto a plain beneath the night sky. The stars were bright in the clear sky, and they could see the thick dusting of stars that made up the galactic center of the Milky Way.  
  
“Should we find a lake or a mountain or something?” asked Bunny, peeking over the edge of the cloud. “To cool him down?”  
  
“No, just set us down in the grass below,” said Anansi as he bandaged Jack’s burned hand and bloody ankle with his webs. “I can take care of this.”     
  
Sandy set them down, and picking up Jack, Anansi turned to the two of them, “I wish to speak with him alone. You can stay nearby. It will only be for a few minutes.”  
  
“Why?” asked Bunny, his hackles suddenly raised. If anyone was going to give Jack what-for after all this mess, it was going to be him.  
  
Though, if he were honest with himself, he was torn on the timing. As furious as he was, Jack looked very pale and small in Anansi’s arms. His face was still touched with fear even in unconsciousness.  
  
“Shouldn’t the eldest have his time to speak with the youngest?” Anansi said, his teeth flashing in the light from Sandy’s dreamsand.  
  
Bunny paused. “Alright. But remember -"  
  
“’Don’t break him,’”  Anansi repeated the warning. “No, the problem here is that he’s breaking himself.”

Bunny and Sandy put distance between themselves and Jack and Anansi, leaving the two comparatively alone on the plain. Anansi sat on the ground, getting comfortable, settling Jack in his lap. Then he looked up at the sky, hummed an ancient little tune, and just like that, rain fell on them both. There were no clouds, just rain out of nothing, pouring down and soaking the green earth. 

In the distance, Sandy erected an umbrella out of his dreamsand over his and Bunny’s heads, and the light from it cast the world around Anansi and Jack in a warm, diffusive glow.    
 

* * *

  
The rain was cool. That was the first thing that registered in his fuzzy head, the coolness around him. Coolness and wetness, like those mornings after the frost he put down started to turn into dew instead. It was a little too wet, though, alarmingly wet, and Jack didn’t like when his face was wet. It had always unnerved him, though it was only recently that he’d finally understood why.  
  
Jack opened his eyes, gasping, thrashing in a slight panic, but strong arms were wrapped around him, not letting him flail hard enough to hurt himself more than he was already hurting.  
  
He saw Anansi’s now-familiar face above him, bright teeth shining in dim golden light. Through the blurring effect of the rain falling down, somehow he saw a cloudless night sky, the stars distorted by the falling water, the light caught like silver in each and every raindrop.  
  
“It’s alright. Ssh, it’s alright, my young friend. You’re safe.”  
  
“Bu--Bu--n’ San--” Jack gasped out raggedly.  
  
“Bunnymund and the Sandman are safe as well. The grootslangs are all dead. You were wounded and overheated. I’ve bandaged your wounds with my webs and they should heal cleanly, though you may have scars on your hand where you were burned. The snake’s blood burned with more than heat, because there is magic in the grootslang’s fire. Let your scars be a reminder of this day and the mistakes you’ve made.”  
  
Jack lay there in Anansi’s arms, letting the rain fall on his face, blinking blearily to get the rain out of his eyes. He opened his mouth a little so that the water fell on his mouth and lips and dried out tongue.      
  
“You saved me,” he eventually croaked weakly.  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“You got eaten to save me.”  
  
“Yes, and it was as unpleasant as it looked.”  
  
“Why? You don’t even like me.”  
  
Anansi’s expression shifted to one that was gentler than any Jack had seen on his face so far.  
  
“Poor little frost spirit, you try so hard. _Too_ hard. You tried so hard today that you refused to listen at every turn. You flew ahead, alone, every time you were told not to. We could have pinned the snake’s tail so that it couldn’t haven’t gotten in through the child’s window, so that you didn’t endanger his life when the roof caved in. We could have tracked the grootslang through the tunnels and faced it together, rather than fighting it so clumsily that all our lives were at risk.”    
  
Jack’s innards twisted with an emotional dance that could have made a contortionist weep with jealousy.  
  
“I was just - I just -”  
  
Jack trailed off, his expression miserable. Some of the water in his eyes might not have been just rain.     
  
“Let me tell you a story,” said Anansi gently. “Once, very very long ago, there was a greedy fool. This fool had heard about a young girl who went into the bush every day to gather food, who was known far and wide for finding the very best food in the bush. She found the largest plums and the ripest bananas and the fool wanted all this for himself. So he found her and asked her to show him where she found her food.”    
  
Jack listened. He listened like he hadn’t until now, letting the story flow into him the same way the cool rain was flowing over his bare skin.    
  
“He was very charming and seemed very kind so she told him she would only show him if he promised to tell no one else where she found it, and if he promised to only take what he needed. He lied to her and made this promise, even though he didn’t plan to keep it, so she led him into the bush. First, she went to a plum tree deep in the bush and told him ‘This is where I find my plums. They are always huge and juicy.’ The fool then showed his true character, which was one of greed, by climbing up the tree and eating every. Single. Plum. The girl now knew that he had lied to her, but rather than stop, she decided to teach him a lesson.”  
  
Anansi raised his eyebrows at this.    
  
“‘Now show me where the bananas are,’ the fool demanded and she showed him. ‘This is where I find the best bananas in all of the bush.’ The fool devoured every single banana as well. By now, his belly was swollen many times it normal size and he could hardly walk, but he still demanded to be shown the next place she found her food. ‘Would you like some honey?’ she asked him. ‘For I know the biggest, best place to find honey in all the bush.’ The fool told her that yes, he wanted the honey, so she led him to a tree that had a great gap in its trunk and inside was a honeycomb filled to the brim with honey. And do you know what the fool did?”  
  
“He … ate all the honey?” Jack tried, wondering where this story was leading, and if it was leading anywhere at all.  
  
“He climbed into the honey tree and ate every single drop! But when he was finished, he found that his stomach had grown so large, he couldn’t fit back out through the hole in the tree. ‘Please,’ he begged the girl. ‘Please, go get help right away. I’m trapped now and I can’t get out!’ But the girl just laughed. ‘You are a greedy fool,’ she said, ‘and this is a just punishment for that greed. You will have to wait until you are small again to leave.’ So the poor fool was left stuck in the honey tree in the dark, until he was eventually small enough to get out through the hole in the tree. When he finally left, he was smaller in _every_ way, because he was wiser now, and knew not to make the same greedy mistake again.”  
  
“What does - what does this have to do with -”  
  
“You’re a greedy boy, Jack Frost.”  
  
Jack frowned. “I’m not greedy. I own, like, four material possessions and one of them just got eaten by a giant snake.”  
  
“You are not greedy for the material. You are greedy for the immaterial. Now that you have found the plum tree and the banana tree and the honey tree, now that you no longer want for belonging and companionship and friendship, you are afraid to lose them. You are afraid to go hungry. So you are greedy. You want attention, you want recognition, you want glory. You want to fix every mistake yourself, because you fear that if you cannot, you will be rejected. Cast out. Alone again, as you were for three hundred long years.”    
  
Jack’s face twisted into another miserable grimace. The contortionist act going in his chest was at the point where any bystanders would be cringing - and maybe gagging - if it was an act in the real world.  
  
“Don’t you see?” Anansi asked earnestly. “If you let this fear consume you, you will only find yourself trapped in the dark in the honey tree. Fear is the only thing that can drive you towards the bad ending of the story that you are trying to avoid, towards the mistakes that could cause true harm. Because fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering.”    
  
“...you just ripped that off Star Wars.”  
  
Jack had - proudly - seen the original trilogy in its original run in the seventies and eighties. When the newer trilogy had come out, he’d shouted at the screen in such a loud fit of nerd rage that he’d almost gotten himself believed in by some members of the audience.

Anansi shrugged, and smiled wide. “It was my story first.”

Jack _almost_ laughed but found that he just couldn’t muster up the energy or spirit to.    
  
Anansi gently pushed Jack’s wet hair out of his eyes and Jack found himself wondering who Anansi really was behind the trickster façade, who he’d been before, and if that person had ever been a big brother or a father. Normally, he’d have felt awkward to be like this, shirtless, held against a stranger like a small child, but he just...wasn’t.  
  
He felt comforted and cared for, in a way he hadn’t felt in a very, very long time. It called to something in him, something that felt like a voice calling him in for supper, or felt like that annoying thing parents did where they got spit on a handkerchief to dab at their kid’s dirty face.  
  
(He’d always wanted someone to dab at his face with spit.)    
  
Anansi looked different in this light, the harshness and guile all gone from his face. Whether that was a calculated move on Anansi’s part or not, he couldn’t tell. He was a trickster, after all.  
  
“I keep messing up,” Jack said plaintively. “Even with Pitch, we got lucky, because of the kids, because of Jamie. I keep messing up, I’ve always messed up, and - and -”  
  
“And you wonder,” said Anansi, “if that can ever change. You wonder if you can master your fear, if you can stop yourself from making the same mistakes - or new mistakes.”  
  
Jack nodded miserably. His voice was thick as he said, “I don’t know. I don’t know... _myself_ well enough to know. I know I’m not a bad person, I know now that I was chosen for a reason, but I don’t know if I can do the things I need to do. I know who I am but I don’t know who I can _be_.”  
  
“Do you think anyone does? Do you think anyone goes through this world always knowing, for absolute certain, the right choices to take every single time? I certainly didn’t. I still don’t - and I am much, _much_ older than you and have had much more time to figure it out. You must learn many things, not the least of which is how not to be greedy. That’s one with an easy solution though.”  
  
“Oh yeah? Lay it on me.”  
  
“Don’t starve yourself,” Anansi pointed out, like it was perfectly logical.  
  
“Don’t starve my - what does that even -”    
  
“You’ll figure it out.”  
  
Jack frowned at him, obstinately.  
  
“I’m not handing them _all_ to you on a silver platter,” Anansi said, just as obstinately.  
  
“So, what I’m getting from all this is that I’m a fool. I’m an idiot. Vague advice on how to fix it. Got it.”  
  
“Yes,” Anansi said, nodding. “That’s about right. _But_. But there is one more lesson in the story I told you that you don’t yet understand.”    
  
“Oh yeah? What’s that?”  
  
“You see, the fool in that story,” Anansi said slowly, “was _me_. After that, I was never that greedy again, never that unwise, never so afraid to go hungry that I damaged myself and trapped myself in the dark.”  
  
Jack looked up at him with wide eyes.  
  
“In that story, the most important lesson of all is this: Fools can _learn_.”    
  
The answers came to him slowly under the starry Ugandan sky. Anansi helped Jack to a sitting position, a gentle hand on his shoulder. Jack sat in the wet grass, gingerly holding his side, looking at his bandaged hand and foot.  
  
“I really did the ‘damaging myself’ part pretty spectacularly, huh.”  
  
“Yes, you did,” said Anansi, “but I expect that you’ll do the ‘fixing yourself’ part just as spectacularly.”    
  
That got the smallest of smiles out of the frost spirit, one that transformed slowly to a guilty look.  
  
“By the way, uh, I’m really sorry about the blizzard thing. With the Serengeti.”  
  
“Apology accepted,” said Anansi. He added, “As long as you never bring your winter there again or I’ll beat you so hard that I’ll suddenly remember one of your distant African ancestors in the earliest days of the world wondering why he’s in so much pain. Do you understand?”  Anansi held up his hand in a way that suggested that it was his beating hand, his face deadly serious. “It will be a beating that will travel backwards through _time_.”  
  
Jack’s memory sparked with a sudden image of a much-hated hazel switch wielded by a particularly humorless school-master. Even now, with many of his memories missing, it put the fear in him. He wasn’t particularly keen on anything resembling a repeat.  
  
“Yes, sir,” he said immediately. “Understood, sir.”  
  
“Good, because the elephants there are endangered, you know, and they're not built for cold.” Anansi’s severe frown gave way to a cheerful grin. “Let’s get you up and over to your friends. You need to go somewhere safe to rest. I recommend somewhere _cold_.”

* * *

   
They decided to return to the North Pole by sand cloud. Bunny was not happy about it, but the ride would be much smoother on the injured Jack.   
  
Anansi bid them farewell under the open sky.

 “So long, old friend,” he said to Bunny, while Sandman loaded Jack onto the sand cloud. “You still have the knack for a good ploy, just like old times. It felt good to share in a bit of mischief again.”

“Ha, yeah,” Bunny agreed with a slight, but genuine, chuckle. “Ah, it was never my center, but yeah, it was fun.” About the only fun anyone'd had on this messy venture.

“But no one is _only_ their center,” Anansi prompted, “and the past is meant to be remembered, not escaped. What _are_ you doing to amuse yourself these days?”

Bunny’s grin had faded sharply. His tone dropped, so that Jack and Sandy were less privy to their conversation. “Amusement’s not my priority, mate, but maybe I’ll see you again soon.”

Anansi shrugged, and patted Bunny briefly on the shoulder.  “Who can say?”

“You probably could,” said Bunny, returning the gesture, “but I don’t expect you will.”

Anansi grinned his brilliant, wide grin. “Sometimes, old friend, I believe you might know me too well.”

Bunny chuckled again, dryly this time, hopping onto the sand cloud. “You’d like me to think that, wouldn’t you?”

“I’ll never say,” Anansi responded.

Sandy produced a sandy hat to tip at Anansi, who saluted back. 

Jack sat where he was on the cloud, clutching his staff pensively and looking back at Anansi.   
  
“The weird thing is...is I can’t tell whether I like you or can’t stand you, but in either case, thank you,” he said quietly.    
  
"Oh, don't worry, you'll never figure it out,” said Anansi cheekily, “but you’re welcome.”  
  
Sandy spread his arms, raising the cloud into the night sky. Anansi shrank beneath them, into a tiny figure soon lost in the dark of the plain. The great expanse of Lake Victoria, reflecting the stars, briefly took up Jack’s vision and then they were up, up, far above the continent, heading north.  
  
Jack looked at Bunny, expecting the lecture to start soon, but Bunny just looked away without a word. Part of Jack hoped Bunny was taking pity on him and saving the verbal lashing for a time when he was less banged up, but another part of him said otherwise. That part was sure that looking away meant “you’re not worth the trouble.”  
  
They’d never been what you could call “friends.” It only really hurt now, when he kind of _wanted_ to be, to think that it was starting to look like they never would.  
  
Sandy’s expression was more sympathetic, at least, and taking comfort in that, Jack curled up at the back of the cloud with his back to the other Guardians and spread a thick layer of frost over himself.  
  
Clutching his staff like a small child might clutch a much-loved teddy bear, Jack fell asleep to the sight of the stars above and the glow of the dreamsand creating a golden haze over the view of the world below.

* * *

  
  
Sandy looked back at the sleeping Jack, whose body was curled in a tense ball. The dream guardian flicked his hand, sending a trail of sand to curl around Jack’s head, taking the form of a little boy and girl playing in a field.   
  
Jack relaxed just slightly. Sandy turned back to Bunny, pressing his lips together, as if to say, ‘Well, that was a mess.’  
  
“You said it,” Bunny agreed, his arms still crossed tightly, also tense, but too wakeful for the comfort of dreams.

Sandy raised his eyebrows at Bunny, looking back at Jack.  
  
“You were expecting me to rip into him already?”  
  
Sandy nodded.  
  
Bunny took a deep breath, and exhaled a long sigh. “Later. Someone _has_ to talk to him, but not right now. He’s been beaten up enough today.” The rabbit’s angry expression faded, sympathy creeping into his voice. “He’s a good kid at heart, but if he doesn’t learn – “  
  
Sandy shook his head.  
  
“You don’t think it’ll be a problem?”  
  
Sandy shook his head again.  
  
A picture appeared again over his head, like earlier, of Jack slamming into a cliff. Then, the sand-Jack looked up and flew _over_ the cliff.    
  
“We can only hope,” said Bunny, and he looked back at Jack, who was breathing evenly as the golden figures rollicked over his head. “For his own good as much as anyone else’s.”  


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the last chapter! Thank you all for reading and we hope you enjoy the next story in the series, The King of Cold Mountain, the first chapter of which is already up. 
> 
> Also, if you've been reading so far and haven't reviewed yet, we'd appreciate some feedback on the story and especially Anansi, since we plan to include him in future stories. Since this is a series, we want to try to learn from any mistakes as we go and want to know what to keep doing if we're doing it right. 
> 
> Last but not least, I started a Jack ask blog on tumblr (http://guardianofscrewingup.tumblr.com) and he comes from the background of the series. Feel free to toss me some asks!

North and Tooth were waiting when they arrived. Tooth was flitting to and fro as the sand-cloud came in for a landing, but the smile on her face faded as she saw how bedraggled the group was.  
  
“How was mission?” asked North in his usual boistrous tones. “Are those upset faces or are those very fierce, triumphant faces? Hard to tell difference sometimes.”  
  
“It was a grootslang,” said Bunny. “We stopped it before it killed another kid, but we probably wouldn’t have survived it if Anansi hadn’t stepped in.  _Someone_ got it in his head to run ahead and showboat every time we told him not to.”    
  
“What happened to Jack’s shirt?” asked Tooth. Two of the minifairies with her were blatantly oggling. She blocked their view with her hand and added awkwardly, “Not that I noticed the lack of shirt beyond there being no shirt where a shirt usually is.”  
  
“The grootslang ate it,” said Jack, “now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going somewhere to sulk shirtlessly like I belong in a soap opera while Bunny tells you how much of a screw-up I am.”  
  
He spoke without bitterness towards Bunny - just with a phlegmatic acceptance of his own failure.  
  
He took to the air, which brought his bandaged foot directly into view. North asked “Jack, you are hurt?”  
  
“I’m fine,” Jack said sullenly, disappearing into the depths of the workshop.  
  
Bunny waited until Jack had gone. “It was a disaster,” he said, once the frost spirit was out of sight. “Tooth, I wish you’d been there. What are you doing here anyway? I thought hockey season had you flat out.”  
  
“Well I got caught up, and I just wanted to be here in case you needed backup. And to see how it went if you didn’t,” Tooth said, still gazing in the direction Jack had gone. Concern clouded her face.  
  
“What is my worry,” said North, rubbing his beard, “is this was grootslang, yes? Last of grootslangs was killed decades ago. Only chance one could be there is if it was down in the earth, sleeping for many a year.”  
  
“Right, that was my thought,” said Bunny. “If there were two left sleeping...” He looked at each of the other Guardians. “...what woke them up?”  


* * *

  
Jack floated aimlessly through the workshop. By now, he’d spent enough time at North’s to notice the patterns of the shop, and to duck out of the way of the working yetis when he needed to, even when he was preoccupied by stressful thoughts.  
  
 _They’re not discussing kicking you off the team, they’re not discussing kicking you off the team. North said it was forever._  
  
The fear telling him otherwise was the same fear that got him into this mess in the first place.  
  
A furry hand grabbed Jack by his good ankle and yanked him down to floor-level. Jack landed face-to-face with Phil.

“What? Come on, I wasn’t doing anything.”  
  
Phil barked some noises in the garbled yeti language and pointed at Jack’s torso.  
  
“It’s not my fault my shirt got eaten!” Jack protested. “Besides, I didn’t know this was a no shirt, no shoes, no service kind of place. None of you guys wear any pants.”  
  
Phil barked something else that sounded like an irritated “grooblegurble” to another yeti and held Jack in place. Jack sighed and rolled his eyes.  
  
“Fine, if you want to play pretend at kicking me out just for old time’s sake, I’ll...”  
  
He stopped when one of the other yetis ran over, carrying a blue sweatshirt in his hands.  It was almost identical to his old one. The yeti handed it to Phil, who handed it to Jack.  Somebody must have wanted a blue hoodie for Christmas, for the yetis to have had one lying around. It wasn’t _that_ surprising – they made pretty much everything here at the pole.  
  
“Thanks.” He took the shirt, looking at Phil, oddly touched.

Phil garbled out a set of noises that probably meant ‘You’re welcome’ and clapped him on the shoulder just a little too hard before letting him go.  
  
He pulled it on, feeling as cozy in it as in the last one, as the edges of the fabric iced over on contact with his skin. At least the yetis had accepted him as something that belonged there and it didn’t seem like anything could shake it.  
  
 _They’re not discussing kicking you off the team, they’re not discussing kicking you off the team..._  
  
Jack sighed and settled in the same window where he’d after Sandy’s “death,” pulling his hood up like it could protect him from the world. It wasn’t that long before Tooth flitted over with her usual darting grace, wringing her hands.  
  
“Jack, are you okay?”  
  
“Oh yeah, I’m fine,” he assured her. “You know how it is. Kinda just needed to hole up and lick my wounds.”    
  
“I can leave you alone if -”  
  
“No no, it’s fine,” he assured her quickly before she could fly off, scooting over to make sure she had enough room. “How’s hockey season going?”  
  
“Oh, busy as ever.” Tooth beamed with unavoidable dental enthusiasm. “I got the most beautiful canine this morning from a little boy in Colorado. It wasn’t as nice as yours but it’s one of the best I’ve ever seen, and it was his first tooth! I expect good things from him in the future, especially if he keeps flossing.” Her enthusiasm was practically oozing all over. Jack wasn’t sure if he’d be able to get the enthusiasm out of his new shirt.  
  
Her enthusiasm was one of the things that made her so fun to be around, though, even if it was primarily focused on all things dental. His mouth quirked into a little smile.    
  
“So, pretty busy, yet you’re here all the way up at the North Pole. How about that?”  
  
Tooth had the look of someone caught in a lie. “Oh, well, you know, I got caught up and I thought it would be nice to stop by.  Show some support for the team.”  
  
She flashed him a big, strained smile, and Jack decided he had never seen a worse liar in his life.  
  
“Mmm hmm. Had nothing to do with seeing how the new guy did on his first mission, huh?”  
  
She just smiled at him, knowing she was caught. Her expression went soft, the feathers around her face twitching just slightly.  
  
“What we do is dangerous, Jack.” She gestured to his bandaged hand. “Case in point. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”  
  
Both of their joking moods were gone, replaced by something a little bit more serious. It was like the air itself had changed around them - or at least it felt that way to Jack. The idea that people actually cared about what happened to him now was new and, well...moving. He was moved by her concern, that really was the best word for it because to be moved meant that the world shifted around you and he liked the way the world was now.

 “I’m...” He trailed off, deciding ‘fine’ wasn’t quite the best way to describe the complex bundle of pain and wisdom he was processing just then. He settled on, “I’m still here. That’s, uh, not the worst it could’ve gone, right?”  
  
Tooth reached out and gently took his wrist, looking at his bandaged hand.  
  
“It could’ve gone better, too.”  
  
“It’s my own fault.”  
  
“Bunny told us what happened but that didn’t explain everything. What happened, Jack? I don’t just mean the order of events, I mean - ”  
  
“Why did I act like an idiot?”  
  
“I would’ve picked slightly nicer words, but yes.”    
  
Moment of truth. Did he tell her why now that he’d figured it out, now that Anansi had given him the words for it? Or did he keep his guard up? That was what he’d always done, stuffed everything down so deep that even he didn’t know it was there sometimes. Being open with himself would’ve made the desire to be open to others stronger - perhaps unbearable.  
  
Anansi’s words came to him, unbidden.  
  
‘Don’t starve yourself.’  
  
He’d been throwing himself head-on (and alone) into everything to show that he could do it, and that “everything” had included handling his feelings. That used to be out of necessity, but now…maybe it wasn’t.  
  
That meant being open, though, and Jack didn’t know how to do open. He barely knew how to deal with people in general. He’d spent so long living in the immediate moment and the world of his own head that he didn’t know how to live in the world where other people wanted to know what he was feeling. It was scary opening up and leaving himself vulnerable.  
  
To overcome one fear, though, he had to let go of the other.  
  
“I acted like an idiot because...because I was scared.”  
  
Tooth looked at him, gaze concerned, waiting for him to explain.  
  
“I didn’t handle things well at first, and then I worried about how it was making me look, and each new time I messed up, I kept trying to fix it on my own to make up for the other times I’d messed up or not listened. By the end, though, I just dug myself into a hole I couldn’t climb back out of.”  
  
“What made you so scared that you felt you had to deal with your mistakes that way?”  
  
“I’m afraid to mess up as a Guardian, because if I do it too badly…then I won’t have anywhere else to go. So I…I just kept trying harder and messing up more and -”  
  
Unexpectedly, his eyes started watering and he closed them tight.    
  
“- And I’m scared. I didn’t used to be scared, because…because before I became a Guardian, I didn’t have anything to lose.”  
  
He was afraid to open his eyes to see her reaction, but he had nothing to be afraid of. He suddenly felt her strong arms wrap around him, pulling him in close. At first, he was tense, unused to the contact, but then he relaxed and leaned his head against her shoulder. Her feathers were smooth and comforting against his face. After a moment, he wrapped his arms around her in return.    
  
“Jack, do you really think that we’d just stop talking to you? For any reason? You’ll learn how to be a good Guardian because you’ve already been a good Guardian, but even if you didn’t, even if you couldn’t, we’d still be friends with you. We’d still talk to you. You do know that, don’t you?”  
  
“I do now,” he said, his voice a little raspy. “It’s good to know. Definitely good to know.”  
  
For the moment, he just leaned against her, enjoying the contact.  
  
“I’m not used to this.”  
  
“Which part of it?” she asked, and he smirked against her neck, because she had a point.  
  
“Aside from, you know, uh, human contact in general, being able to get reassurance for things. There was always one thing I needed to know and whenever I asked, I never got an answer.”  

Tooth leaned back, laying her hand along the side of Jack’s face.  Her eyes were warm with understanding.  “All of this is new for you. It’ll take time to get used to it.”  
  
“I don’t really know how to do it,” Jack said. He drank in the understanding in Tooth’s expression, but had to look away, surprised by just how good seeing that look on someone else’s face felt after never having seen it before.  “All I know is that I’m way more messed up than I thought.”  
  
Tooth laid both her hands over his. She paused, and her voice was solemn. “The years add...layers to us,” she said softly. “Each new layer changes how we see the old ones. It changes the things we think we know about ourselves.”  
  
She lifted her hand to his cheek again. “You’re not broken, Jack. You’re just growing and sometimes there are growing pains - trust me, the first few centuries are always the hardest.”     
  
Jack looked at her again with gratitude, again drinking in the sight of her.  He couldn’t get over how different her face looked at different times. He’d seen her at her most ferocious before, teeth bared, eyes narrowed, but right now, she was at her most gentle, her eyes half-lidded, lips curved into a serene smile.  
  
She brushed her thumb against his cheek again.  
  
“Now how about a smile?”  
  
It was easier to smile, after this talk, with Tooth’s hand feeling soft on his face.

The smile quirked into an even bigger grin as he realized -  
  
“...You’re just trying to get a good look at my teeth, aren’t you.”    
  
Tooth pressed her lips together, looking impishly guilty in that she didn’t look like she felt guilty at all. She lifted her hand, shaking it in a fifty-fifty gesture. 

Jack grinned and opened his mouth. Tooth heaved a sigh of adoration that was maybe only mostly exaggerated.  
  
He laughed. “I’m really starting to think you might have a problem. Do we need to run an intervention? You don’t watch my teeth sleep at night, do you? Could you at least buy them dinner and a movie first?”’

Tooth dug her fingers into his side in a tickle attack. “It’s not my fault you have nice teeth!”  
  
“I know you’re in love with my canines, but I do have to warn you that they’re currently - ha ha! - in a very serious relationship with my molars.”  
  
“Jack, I’m not sure you have the relative maturity to allow your teeth to date, when you’re still letting someone else pick out your clothes. Maybe your canines and molars should be asking the yetis for a chaperone,” she said, her mouth quirked in a mischievous grin.  
  
“Hey, I couldn’t stop them! They’re kinda forceful, you know. Personally, I really was looking forward to angsting shirtless like a soap opera star.”  
  
“So was I,” Jack _thought_ he heard her say.  
  
“What?”  
  
“Nothing!” She stood up and took to the air. “You should come back down, when you’re ready. North wants to tell us about his mission with the yetis. It’ll be entertaining. But first,” she said, the levity slipping a little from her expression.  “There’s something else we have to do. All of us.”

She held out her hand. It took a few moments for the last bit of conversation to register in Jack’s mind, and he fought from allowing his confusion to show on his face.  She hadn’t been trying to get a better look at more than his teeth, had she?  
  
 _Come on, get real_ , he thought, as he took her hand and followed her back to meet with the other Guardians.

It was time to get out of that stupid honey tree.  


* * *

  
“Ah, Jack, there you are!”

North hadn’t begun telling everyone about his adventure just yet, and everyone seemed a touch somber. For a moment, Jack worried that they were about to break the bad news that he was off the team, but then he saw six candles on the plaque on the floor that had once been Sandy’s memorial.  
  
“This is something we do sometimes,” said North, rubbing his hands and then gesturing to the candles. “When there is death on a mission – when children are lost - sometimes is good to be confronting this rather than ignoring it, yes?”  
  
Jack immediately felt guilty again. He’d been so concerned with his own troubles that he’d already forgotten the six lives that had been lost. Now that his focus had shifted back to them, he realized that North was right about confronting it. His fear of getting kicked off the team ran hand in hand with his fear of failing someone he was trying to save.  
  
Failure didn’t exist in a vacuum. It existed because you failed someone else. But there was nothing he could do now for the six who were lost but remember them.    
  
Tooth held a long match out to him. “Would you like to light the candles, Jack?”  
  
Jack nodded and took the match, lighting it on a candle North held out to him. He lit the six candles, their wicks sizzling, and stepped back quickly before the cold from his hand could put the fires out. An elf reached up and took the spent match from his hand.  
  
Jack stared at the flickering candles. He could almost imagine each light as the light that had shone inside the children they represented – could almost see the vague shapes of the children that they had been, dancing in the flames.

They shouldn’t have just been a passing thought. They should have been the priority. He should have listened to the briefing, should have asked Bunny and Sandy the right questions, and should have done better on that mission for the other children like them.  
  
North spoke the childrens’ names, one by one, as Sandy showed some of their dreams.  Jack felt the urge to say something himself, though for a long while, he wasn’t sure what to say.

“I’m sorry,” he said eventually, when Sandy was finished. The others looked confused, as if they were wondering whether he was apologizing to them, but he was still looking at the six lights.  
  
“I’m sorry I was so focused on myself when I should have been thinking about you. I’m sorry we weren’t there; we would have been if we’d known.”    
  
He hoped the children had gone on to something better. In all his years of watching the pain and joy of the human race - the children especially - he’d always hoped that. He couldn’t have endured watching slavery, child labor, and two world wars without that hope.      
    
Speaking of hope, Bunny was watching him out of the corner of his eye. His expression was reflective, but also softer than it’d been before.    
  
“You’ll be missed and I promise we won’t forget you,” Jack finished, knowing that it was the truth.  
  
He hadn’t forgotten a single child he’d played with in the snow. North could recite from his lists from memory. Tooth had remembered, specifically, that Jack’s teeth had been in her palace. That was just how it worked. Maybe it was just part and parcel of what they were.     
  
Aside from the general, though, Jack knew that he’d remember this because it had taught him more about what being a Guardian meant.  
  
He was jarred from his thoughts by Tooth slipping a warm hand in his and by North’s large, weathered hand grasping his other.  
  
They stood for a moment in silence, unified in purpose, and Jack felt his worries about belonging melting away. North clapped Jack on the shoulder when they finally broke apart.  
  
“Well said, Jack. Those were very good words.” He waved at the elves and they darted in to extinguish and remove the candles. “This is always sad moment, but life goes on.”

Jack knew North was right. Life always had gone on. They had to go on as well, to prevent some of the suffering, even if they couldn’t prevent it all.

“We go back to work –“ North continued – “and I still must tell you of my mission with yetis.”  
  
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Jack said, hopping up to sit on the railing.  
  
North started his tale and Jack half-listened, lost as he was in his own thoughts. He knew now that he’d learn. He’d stop being afraid. He’d figure himself out, figure out this whole thing with friendships and connections with other people, figure out how to do this Guardian thing right.  
  
He’d do it all because he could _choose_ to do those things – and more than anything, because the kids deserved it.  
  
Jack glanced at Bunny, who was still ignoring him. He even felt a little bit less hopeless about that particular bridge – maybe it wasn’t so much burnt as it was damaged and in need of repair.  
  
“--so there we were in mountains completely surrounded. I had out my swords and Phil - Phil was there - swung down from a rope and – poof! Lights out. We fought them in the dark, because if we lit up a torch, we’d see their eyes and be turned to stone!”  
  
For the moment, Jack sat and listened and willed himself to believe that this could keep being his world. If he believed it, then in the future, maybe he wouldn’t be so afraid to lose it that he’d act the fool.

* * *

  
In a cave in Zimbabwe, a creature slithered out of the dark. It was not a grootslang but like the grootslang, it intended to cause harm to the world as soon as it could run free. Like the grootslang, it had woken up because something else had been making noise deep in the underground of the world.

Like the grootslang, it died, because Anansi decided it should not live before it ever left the cave.  
  
He shook the remains of the foul creature from the hard spike of his spider leg and stood listening at the entrance of the cave. Far off, down deep, he heard laughter.Like his laughter, it was nearly as old as the world itself. Unlike his own, it was not joyous.  
  
Anansi took his leave, flying by web parachute to his cave. Inside, he became again the spider that he was, and looked at the stories etched in his webbing. Another story had been caught, and hung unformed. He quickly wove to see what sort of story it would become.

When he finished, there was the outline of a spider in the webs.

He crawled out of his cave and again became a man. He looked up at the moon as it cast its glow over the world.

“The boy is precious to you,” he said to the moon. “I can see why. He is a fool, but he is a fool with a strong heart. That’s why you asked me to fix up your mess - as you have always done. Even you have your vanity, my old friend, and what better way to reflect your light into this world than with the ice and snow? I must admit, it’s powerful imagery: little boy blue with his crook, a child protecting other children, a shepherd guarding his flock.”    
  
Anansi shook his head. “But you have harmed him, as is more often your way than you realize. Your distance blinds you to the wounds human hearts can take, my friend. You forget in your solitude that others do not take to it so well.”  
  
He raised a hand to gesture at the sky. “Take it from someone who understands the webs that make up the world. You have forgotten that many have a need for connection with others.”  
  
Anansi sat for a moment, gathering his thoughts. “You have forgotten my _own_ need for connection.”  
  
He held up his hand, encircling the moon with his fingers, staring at it with one eye.  
  
“Nyame, whose eye is the moon, long ago, you told me there would be a price to pay for the stories I requested. Even after I brought you Onini the Python, Mmoatia the goblin, Osebo the Leopard, and the Mmoboro Hornets- killers of children all - you said that was not enough. You said that another price had to be paid for the stories, but that price has become too steep. Always, I have only pushed and prodded at the story from afar. Always, I have been a guide, showing others how to be wise and how to avoid foolishness. Always, I have done this from the shadows, never complaining, when others like Pitch have not been so patient about dwelling in the dark.”  
  
Anansi dropped his hand and looked up at the moon, his expression contentious.  
  
“Restraining myself to indirect action is too great a price for one who has a heart like mine, always breaking at the evil in the world. Now I wish to be my own agent of change, and the stories tell me this can be so. It’s time the other Guardians knew the truth, that there has ever been another of their number, hidden from them. It’s time I took my place beside them. You can either choose to work with me or against me - which will it be?”  
  
Anansi waited for an answer. His teeth flashed in the moonlight when he got it.  
  
“Good call, old friend. I’ll pack my things.”  
  
With that, he crawled back into the dark to make his preparations. The webs still vibrated, etched with the story that had sent him to join the fight against the grootslang in the first place. It was told in two deceptively simple images.  
  
One: a tiny rabbit, surrounded by snowflakes, holding the single shoot of a plant in its paws.  
  
The other: a young man with a staff, grasped by an old man with a clawlike hand of jagged ice, his mouth opened wide to swallow the youngster whole.         
  
Anansi felt the tension in the air of the oncoming story, heard in the vibration of the webs how much closer it had come, how great the impact would be when it happened. He heard how much they, whom the story most concerned, would need guidance from one who knew stories as only he did.  
  
“Yes,” he said quietly to himself, “it’s time they all met the Guardian of Stories.”


End file.
